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CfiRORIGHT DEPOSm 



WHAT IS THE 

CHRISTIAN VIEW 

OF WORK 

ANDWEAITH? 



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SOCIAL PROBLEM DISCUSSION SERIES 



WHAT IS THE 

CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WORK 

AND WEALTH? 

Prepared by a Committee Representing 

The Commission on the Church and Social Service of the Federal 

Council of Churches 

The Canadian Brotherhood Federation 

The International Committee of Young Men's Christian Associations 

The National Board of Young Women's Christian Associations 




ASSOCIATION PRESS 

New York: 347 Madison Avbnub 
1920 

Monograph 



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Copyright, 1920, by 
Frederick Harris 



OCT -7 1920 
©Cf,A576815 



FOREWORD 

The title of this outline was designedly phrased in question form : 
"What Is the Christian View of Work and Wealth ?" The purpose 
of the outline is to raise frankly the questions at issue in the Chris- 
tian solution of the present perplexing problems of work and wealth 
and to give such reference quotations as will set forth the more im- 
portant opinions held on these subjects and furnish the basis for 
the formation of an intelligent opinion. 

The outline is in no sense propaganda material. No particular 
theory or policy is set forth, and no one solution advocated. We 
have been living through a period of unlimited propaganda, good 
and bad. Different groups have attempted to determine the atti- 
tudes and action of the public on various important problems, until 
the individual is at loss to know where to find the truth or how to 
act. This outline assumes that individuals and groups have a right 
to do their own thinking and to come to their own conclusions ; and 
that what is needed at present is such material as will give the basis 
for intelligent thinking, discussion, and action. 

To this end, each chapter contains, first, a series of questions. 
These constitute the lesson proper, and form the basis for indi- 
vidual thinking and group discussion. They are intended to make 
clear the issues of the problem considered in the chapter. Indi- 
viduals or groups, working through these questions, will see more 
clearly and vividly the real issues. 

These questions are followed by quotations, giving "Current 
Opinions on the Questions at Issue." These quotations are classi- 
fied under the major issues of the problem of each chapter, and have 
been selected with a view to representing every considerable body 
of opinion on each important question. The reader will discover 
at once that some of the quotations are mutually quite contradictory. 
The course is not designed to impart views, but rather to raise 
questions and to supply data upon which individuals or groups can 
form opinions. 

Some persons may ask: Has the ordinary layman a right to 
form opinions on questions so difficult and technical as those raised 
in this outline? Must we not leave the handling of such questions 
to the experts? A sufficient answer is the fact that we are form- 

iii 



iv FOREWORD 

ing opinions on these questions and are under the necessity of act- 
ing on them. Further, one should note carefully the difference 
between a moral and a technical judgment. This course makes no 
effort to deal extensively with the technical questions of economic 
and industrial adjustment which the embodiment of a Christian 
viewpoint may make necessary. It does imply, however, that non- 
expert individuals and groups have a right to a moral judgment on 
what is promotive of human welfare, and on what is consistent 
with the Christian view of life; and then that they have a 
right to insist that the technical experts shall not attempt to avoid 
the issues by the easy excuse, "It won't work," but shall use their 
technical skill to embody in industrial and economic life those 
Christian principles which the people may come to feel are essential. 

Brief Scripture selections and a few short prayers are appended 
to the course. They are intended for devotional purposes solely, 
and no attempt has been made to suit the readings closely to the 
themes of the particular lessons. They are rather designed to 
prepare the mind for a reverent and sympathetic approach to the 
subject. Any selection may be used with any lesson, or discarded 
in favor of a passage chosen by the leader himself, or an extempore 
prayer. 

The course has been prepared by a committee formed at the 
instance of the Commission on the Church and Social Service, and 
representing informally the bodies noted on the title page. The 
members of this committee are: 

Samuel Z. Batten, F. Ernest Johnson, 

Ethel M. Cutler, Ernest Thomas, 

Harrison S. Elliott, Benjamin S. Winchester. 

A Word to the Leader 

The questions at the opening of each chapter are such as could be 
successfully used in the discussions of a small group, a larger class, 
or a general forum. These questions are arranged, in the main, in 
the order which would make the discussion most rewarding — 
namely, first, questions which open up the problem in terms of 
experience; second, questions which give opportunity for consider- 
ing various views concerning the solution and for coming to a group 
judgment as to the best way out; and third, questions which deal 
with action — the carrying out of the solution in the life of today. 



FOREWORD V 

There are probably more questions than can be used in any single 
discussion. Further, no leader of such a discussion would get the 
best results by following the questions mechanically. He may 
need to choose, revise, eliminate, add others of his own, and come 
to the discussion with clear-cut questions which will form the basis 
of consideration by the group. 

The leader of the discussion should be a chairman. He should 
not attempt to put over any particular point of view, but to see to 
it that there is fair discussion. To this end, he probably will not 
wish to take part himself. He will have all he can do if he carries 
out his duties as chairman, stating the questions, seeing that all 
sides are represented in the discussion, and summarizing the con- 
clusions. He may find a blackboard of help if he is handling a 
large group. There is no reason why the chairman should not sup- 
ply information or give his personal opinion when called upon. 

The leader must be sure that provision is made for introducing 
into the discussion the necessary material from the quotations given 
under "Current Opinions on the Questions at Issue," in order that 
the discussion may have the necessary informational basis. To 
this end, a copy of the outline should be in the hands of as many 
of the group as possible. Sometimes he will depend upon the 
general study and reading of the outline, secured through his careful 
advance assignment of the topic for the week. Again, he will make 
special assignment of certain topics to particular individuals, and 
will ask them to be ready to furnish the material at the time it is 
needed. Still again, he will ask certain individuals each to study a 
different aspect of the week's problem as found in the quotations. 
These different points of view will be presented at the opening of the 
hour, and will be followed by general discussion. 



CONTENTS 

PAGB 

Foreword iii 

I. What Can a Family Do about the High Cost of 

Living? i 

II. Who Should Support the Family? 8 

III. Who Should Be Excused from Work? 14 

IV. What Is a Fair Return for a Fair Day's Work? . . 20 

V. What Is the Right Attitude toward Property 

AND Income? 29 

VI. What Should the Parties to Industry Do to Se- 
cure Their Rights? 39 

VII. For Whom Should Industry Be Run? 49 

VIII. What Share Should Labor Have in the Manage- 
ment OF Industry? 56 

IX. What Is the Christian Motive FOR Industry ? . . . 66 

X. What Changes Are Demanded by a Christian View 

OF Work and Wealth ? 75 

XL Suggested Devotional Material 87 



CHAPTER I 

WHAT CAN A FAMILY DO ABOUT THE HIGH 
COST OF LIVING? 

1. How does the present cost of living for a family compare with 
the cost during the period immediately before the Great War? 

2. What are the reasons for the high cost of living? 

3. Some say that the family's increased difficulty in making both 
ends meet is due more to luxury than to the high cost of living. 
What do you think? Has there really been a decided increase in 
luxurious living? 

4. What things considered necessities today were formerly called 
luxuries ? Are they luxuries or necessities ? 

5. What things considered essential for one group are thought 
unnecessary for another group? Why? 

6. How would you determine what is a luxury? For instance 
might an automobile, golf, opera, magazines, or a victrola be a neces- 
sity in one family and a luxury in another ? 

7. What is a fair proportion of luxuries to necessities? Would 
this be the same for all families ? 

8. If a family never has had a chance to learn how to create its 
own recreation, would you or would you not justify extra money 
for commercial amusements as a part of a fair living standard? 

9. How much in the way of money for education and recrea- 
tion has a family a right to demand ? 

10. What makes the difference now in the standards of living 
between different families? By what standard would you deter- 
mine what is fair for a family ? 

11. Can a Christian ask for himself anything in the way of living 
standard, which is not available for others ? Why do you hold this 
opinion ? 

I 



2 CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WORK AND WEALTH 

CURRENT OPINIONS ON THE QUESTIONS AT ISSUE 

I. What Is the Reason for the High Cost of Living f 

Opinion of U. S. Department of Labor 

1. By far the most important cause of increased prices is the 
enormous additions to the circulating medium, money and its substitutes, 
during the past four years ; 

2. Decrease in the actual physical quantities of goods produced 
and exchanged; 

3. Manufacture for and purchase by the governments of the world 
for war and other purposes ; and 

4. Changes in the demands for and the supply of goods and services. 
— Monthly Labor Rcviezv, Feb., 1920, p. 95. (U. S. Department of 
Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics.) 

The Opinion of a Manufacturers' Journal 

The present high cost of living is due in great part to the payment of 
excessive wages, and the worker is the chief sufferer. It is a question 
whether a cure can be brought about without depression and panic, but 
economic laws are immutable and conditions will restore themselves to 
normal even at the expense of national depression and national suffer- 
ing. These things can be avoided by the exercise of common sense, but 
where there is arrogance and greed there is no common sense. — Indus- 
try, Oct. 15, 1919, p. 5. 

Fortunes in War Profits 

In a recent speech before the Senate, Senator Capper of Kansas 
made the statement that during the war the American people paid for 
the coal mines, the steel mills, the textile factories, and every other essen- 
tial branch of industry. Senator Capper did not give the facts upon 
which his statement rested, and I doubt if he knew how literally true 
that sensational statement was, but the fact is that the American people 
during the war did pay in net profits for the entire capital stock of the 
corporations in the essential lines of industry and trade. 

In other words, it is clear that if the national government at the 
beginning of the war had taken over the essential lines of industry, 
and the American people had been required to pay the prices which 
private manufacturers and merchants have charged them, there would 
have been sufficient profit to pay for every dollar's worth of capital stock, 
and leave the nation today in possession and control of practically all 
its manufacturing plants. — Basil M. Manly, "War Profits of the Patri- 
otcers," The Searchlight, April i, 1920, pp. 19, 20. 



THE FAMILY AND HIGH COST OF LIVING? 3 

A Claim that Profiteering Is Not the Cause 

Undoubtedly, profiteering of a most reprehensible sort has existed 
and does exist today, but the profiteer is a result of ever-increasing prices 
rather than a cause thereof. His influence in boosting prices is negligible. 
If all the profiteers in the world could be apprehended and thrown into 
jail or lined up and shot, it would have no appreciable influence upon 
prices. — R. F. Meeker, Monthly Labor Review, Feb., 1920, pp. 95, 96. 

The Case for the Profiteers 

But first let us define the present status in quo. There is profiteering 
on an enormous scale, but are we not in business to make profits? And 
when did it cease to be "good" business to make as much profit as pos- 
sible? When did a merchant's ability (as such) cease to be gauged by 
the profits he made? The stern economic law of supply and demand is 
the charter of the profiteer. If he is now having his day, what pro- 
vision was made in bad times of the past to insure him against loss? 
Did not the public rush to benefit by his losses when his supply exceeded 
the demand and he was forced to unload to meet his pressing obligations? 
How silly, then, to expect the profiteer of today to treat the public more 
generously than the dear public would treat him if the conditions were 
reversed. — N. Y. Times, Sunday, July 25, 1920. 

An Argument for Limiting Production 

We must clothe a naked European world; the balance of the world 
is half clothed, having economized in cotton goods for the last five years. 
. . . They must have our raw cotton. We hold it. 

For the first time since cotton was cultivated in America we can name 
our own price for cotton. To retain this privilege, we must never again 
overproduce, but raise our own feed and food crops and a surplus to 
sell, raising cotton as a surplus crop, thus enabling us to get profitable 
prices and have the privilege of naming our own price. This means a 
blessing to every woman, child, and person in the South: it means that 
illiteracy will vanish like fog before the noonday sun ; it means blessings 
too numerous to mention. It means that sectional lines and prejudice 
will vanish; that the South will become the pride and heart of this 
entire great nation. — J. S. Wannamaker, "High Prices for Cotton and 
How to Make These High Prices Permanent," Progressive Farmer, June 
14, 1919, page 997. 

A Union Leader Calls for Production 

We officers understand that the principle of our organization is to 
deal with the employers so that the rights of our people will always be 
protected. But it is not our purpose to protect them against work. Em- 



4 CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WORK AND WEALTH 

ployers demand safeguards against decreased production, when we de- 
mand increased wages. And we stand for production ; we want shorter 
hours to give you more leisure and more money to insure better living 
conditions, but I refuse to be a party to a vicious campaign of labor 
against production. The greatest enemies of our organization are those 
who speak against production. For such a policy would ultimately be 
our downfall. — Sidney Hillman, quoted in New York Evening Post, May 
13, 1920, "Needle Fusion Promises Power." 

Judge Gary Expresses Optimism 

However, somewhat to my surprise, I have, upon inquiry during 
the last thirty or forty days, ascertained that labor at our various plants 
is more efficient per man than it has been at any time before during the 
last five years. — Judge Elbert H. Gary, in N. Y. Times, July 23, 1920. 

The Opinion of an Industrial Engineer 

Figures show that, on the average, 40 per cent of blast furnaces 
were kept idle during the last decade. The consumers paid about $79,- 
200,000 yearly for these unused furnaces, of which at least $49,500,000 
was avoidable. The total waste of fuel in steel and iron plants today as 
compared with 191 5 is nearly $12,000,000, which, if saved, would be enough 
to increase present wages of every worker in the industry by something 
like $200 per year. — Statements taken from W. N. Polakov, "Organized 
Sabotage," Socialist Reviezu, April, 1920, pp. 198-205, 

An Example from British History 

Let us so increase productivity that we do not in the process sacri- 
fice the producer to the product. In the first half of the nineteenth cen- 
tury and during and after the Napoleonic wars Britain increased her 
productivity to an extraordinary degree, but never was a free people 
more impoverished, more disgracefully oppressed, more endangered in 
morals and in health. The first half of the twentieth century must not 
repeat that tale. — R. M. Maclver, "Labor and the Changing World," 
p. 102. 

II. What Effects Do Extreme Poverty and Luxury Have upon 
Family Life? 

Social Workers Warn of Perils to the Family 

Now it is useless to deny that in certain of its primary tasks the 
family has been subjected of late to very severe tests and that it has failed 
to meet them. Protection in childhood, the inculcation of necessary 
social habits and economic virtues, the maintenance of minimum stand- 



THE FAMILY AND HIGH COST OF LIVING? 5 

ards of sanitation, health, comfort, and education, the protection of 
women from overwork, from physiologically injurious employment, and 
from any kinds of regular work for wages immediately before and im- 
mediately after childbirth, and at other periods when there is imperative 
need of release from the strain of such occupation; and the proper care 
of aged and infirm persons who are no longer able to work — such are the 
responsibilities which we have assumed to belong to the family. — Edward 
T. Devine, "The Family and Social Work," pp. 79, 80. 

There is need, moreover, that we recognize the elements in our 
communities which tend to break down this normal family life. 
But that in individual cases it does fail to function is too obvious to 
need stressing. Sickness, inadequate wages, bad housing, intemperance, 
immorality, all these and many other factors break down this finely ad- 
justed institution. Some of these are factors outside the family itself, 
for which the community is responsible, and which must be removed 
by community action. More and more we recognize how many times 
family breakdowns may be traced to unwholesome external conditions 
such as these : a tenement so small that there is no place for real family 
gatherings ; a father whose hours of work are so long that he cannot 
share his children's lives ; an income too small to make joint recreation 
possible; these and many like factors nullify the truly educational possi- 
bilities of the home. — Margaret F. Byington, "The Normal Family," 
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, May, 
1918, p. 27. 

Aggregate Waste o£ Luxurious Living Declared Appalling 

Regarded from the standpoint of pecuniary expenditure, the mis- 
direction of the surplus income into empty or depraved modes of recrea- 
tion, culture, religion, and charity is the largest of all economic wastes. 
Could it be set forth in veracious accounts, its enormity would impress 
all reflective minds. How small the total yield of human welfare or 
even of current pleasurable satisfaction from the idle travel, racing, 
hunting, motoring, golfing, yachting, betting, and gambling, in compari- 
son with the human gain from the work and arts of which they are the 
futile substitutes ! — J. A. Hobson, "Work and Wealth : A Human Valu- 
ation," pp. 157, 158. 

Workers Charged with Extravagance 

A Negro miner came into the office one day to ask us to make him 
a cash advance against his pay. Bear in mind that we pay in cash every 
fortnight, and men are not supposed to draw cash before paydays except 
in case of emergency. He explained his emergency as being that he 



6 CHRISTIAN VIEW OP WORK AND WEALTH 

had $40 worth of clothes at the express office which he had to take out. 
He was wearing a better suit than our general manager at the time. 
The word thrift seems to be forgotten. Laboring men are buying silk 
shirts from $7.50 to $12 each, silk hose, expensive clothing, and auto- 
mobiles, and are not content with Sundays and Saturday afternoons as 
time for riding around and showing off their finery. — James Bowron, in 
Manufacturers' Record, April 15, 1920, p. 108. 

Useless Work Condemned in Peace as in War 

Everybody recognizes that the army contractor who, in time of war, 
set several hundred navvies to dig an artificial lake in his grounds, was 
not adding to, but subtracting from, the wealth of the nation. But in time 
of peace many hundred thousand workmen, if they are not digging ponds, 
are doing work which is equally foolish and wasteful ; though, in peace 
as in war, there is important work, which is waiting to be done, and 
which is neglected. It is neglected because, while the effective demand 
of the mass of men is only too small, there is a small class which wears 
several men's clothes, eats several men's dinners, occupies several fam- 
ilies' houses, and lives several men's lives. — R. H. Tawney, "The Sick- 
ness of an Acquisitive Society," pp. 20, 21. 

Everybody to Blame 

It is idle to inveigh against labor or any other class. A general 
disposition seems to pervade all sections of society to work less and 
consume more, overlooking the fact that what is consumed must first be 
produced, and that any prolonged following of such a course must in- 
evitably result in all having less. — A. B. Farquhar, in Manufacturers' 
Record, April 15, 1920, p. loi. 

HI. What Should Be Included in the Family Budget? 

Range of Reasonable Needs of the Family 

Few people would today have the hardihood to deny that man's life 
should contain the largest possible amounts of v/holesome pleasure. "One 
of the strongest human wants is the desire for the society of one's fel- 
lows." This means that with a normal standard of living the house 
should contain a room fit for entertainment of company, that the family 
should have clothes which will enable them to appear in public without 
shame, and that the routine should include some leisure for polite inter- 
course. Still if a man is to be an end in himself, he must have more 
than this; he needs some education, books, pictures, and wholesome 
recreation; he must have time for the home life that Colonel Roosevelt 
calls "the highest and finest product of our civilization." 



THE FAMILY AND HIGH COST OF LIVING? 7 

Beside all these things, a normal standard of living contains pro- 
vision for all emergencies — sickness, accident, unemployment, and death 
— and for material advance — savings; religion, too, should be in the 
routine. So the ideal standard of living demands the satisfaction of 
reasonable w^ants of both body and intellect, and includes an ambition 
to improve. — F. H. Streightoff, "The Standard of Living," pp. 5, 6. 



CHAPTER II 
WHO SHOULD SUPPORT THE FAMILY? 

1. On what basis are wages now estimated; on the idea that 
the mother and children should help in the family support or that 
the father should carry it all? 

2. What does the housewife contribute to the family support? 
What rights should she enjoy as one of the supporters of the family? 

3. Upon what proportion of the family income has the house- 
wife a rightful claim ? 

4. What is a "union day" for the housewife? 

5. Under what conditions, if any, should the housewife be ex- 
pected to earn money toward the family budget ? 

6. What are the reasons why children are required to help sup- 
port the family? At what age should they begin to assume such 
responsibility? What part should they take in the family support? 

7. Where would you draw the line between injurious child labor 
and work of real value to the children? 

8. What should determine the age at which any person should 
enter full time employment? 

9. Ideally, on whom should the burden of supporting the family 
rest ? What share may the mother and the older sons and daughters 
properly be depended on to carry? 

CURRENT OPINIONS ON THE QUESTIONS AT ISSUE 

I. Should Women Help Support the Family f 

Recognize Economic Contribution of the Housewife 

I am forced to smile at the great emphasis placed on the dignity 
of woman's profession of home-making, which immediately and quite 
instantaneously becomes humiliating drudgery when a professor attempts 
it. It savors of the good old Indian days when any work whatsoever 
was "squaw's work." . . . 

8 



WHO SHOULD SUPPORT THE FAMILY? 9 

I must bolster up my husband's dignity and profession by appearing 
at numerous social functions. I meet and occasionally entertain his 
colleagues. I must keep the washtub and dishes firmly submerged in 
my subconscious, while I flash wit and wisdom to his everlasting credit, 
if I can. If my professor companion can't retain his brains and dignity 
after an occasional turn at the dish-mop or wringer, how on earth am 
I to appear his equal before his colleagvies, when my whole working ener- 
gies at home are spent in such "little" duties that my brains are in con- 
tinual danger of running down the kitchen sink ? . . . 

I enjoy doing some reference work at the library for my husband, 
when I have time to leave my profession of homemaking. Should he 
feel any less joy in occasionally doing a little reference work for me? 
If not, he does not respect me in my job and we are not "comrades and 
partners," but I am his faithful domestic. — "The Dishwashing Professor 
Again," New Republic, June 30, 1920, p. 153. 

Pay for Housewives 

Women in domestic work, whether married or unmarried, will re- 
ceive pay as they would if they were in industry. This will secure the 
complete economic independence of wives, which is difficult to achieve 
in any other way, since mothers of young children ought not to be ex- 
pected to work outside the home. — Bertrand Russell, "Proposed Roads 
to Freedom," p. 196. 

Recognize the Dignity and Satisfaction in Home Work 

The Church believes that home making and motherhood will always 
be the great profession of womankind; and to this end, the Church 
should use its great influence to secure for woman in the home, economic 
independence, the control of her own person, and a professional standing 
in her work equal to that of men in any service which they render. — 
"The Church and Social Reconstruction," a statement issued by the Com- 
mission on the Church and Social Service of the Federal Council of the 
Churches of Christ in America. 

Some British Figures 

The British Labour Gazette records 1,442,000 instances in which 
women have directly displaced men in jobs during the four years of the 
war. 

British industries show an increase of women and girls in industry 
from 2,175,500 to 2,708,500. In miscellaneous occupations the increase 
is more marked, being from 1,099,500 to 2,042,500. Other belligerent 
countries had similar experiences. 

No general withdrawal of women from the newly occupied territory 



lo CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WORK AND WEALTH 

is likely; so another way out mutt be found. — (Figure* compiled fr«m 
recent reports.) 

Emancipation of Women 

Prior to 1840 in Massachusetts a woman had no legal right to serve 
as treasurer of her own sewing society without some man being sponsor 
for her. But in the far West on the isolated farm it was impossible to 
preserve the old traditions that hedged about the woman of colonial days. 
Her economic importance as the home-builder guaranteed her freedom and 
elevated her social standing. — John M. Mecklin, "An Introduction to 
Social Ethics," p. 234. 

Perils to the Home from Workers in Industry 

Family life in the home is sapped in its foundations when the 
mothers of young children work for wages. Yet each census shows a 
greater number of cities where married women are so employed — and 
infant mortality ranges high. In Fall River, the characteristic textile 
manufacturing city of New England, not only is the general death rate 
higher than in any other city of the same size, but infant mortality, 
in particular, reaches an appalling figure. This has been the history 
of the textile industries wherever they have been developed — in Ger- 
many, in England, or in this country — a high infant death rate has been 
their by-product. The double task laid upon mothers in such industrial 
communities is more than they can perform, and the babies pay the 
penalty with their lives. — Florence Kelley, "Modern Industry and the 
Family," p. 16. 

Results of Economic Pressure 

The lower paid workers meet their situation by having more than 
one breadwinner in .a family. A committee of prominent citizens, in no 
way prejudiced in the strikers' favor, reported as follows: 

"Federal census enumerators now at work report the absence from 
home of both the mother and father in almost every case. The estab- 
lished practice is to have all the children in an apartment house cared 
for by one person — sometimes a young girl, or an old woman, or even an 
old man." 

Obviously this condition aggravates the home situations among the 
workers. The committee goes on to say : 

"The Superintendent of the Board of Health reports a prevalence 
of malnutrition among the young children, ascribed by some investi- 
gators to poverty, but really due to neglect by the parents, who are 
working in the mill." — Report on the Lawrence Strike of 1919, Com- 
mission on the Church and Social Service. 



WHO SHOULD SUPPORT THE FAMILY? ii 

The new industrial order likewise affects the middle-class home in 
that it offers to women careers of economic independence and usefulness. 
The situation here, however, is still further complicated by the growing 
sense of personal rights and dignity that rebels against the economic 
dependence and the domestic drudgery of the home. With the sudden 
amassing of great fortunes within the last few decades we have the 
appearance of the parasitic wife and the multiplication of temptations 
to follow the leadings of a selfish and irresponsible individualism made 
familiar to us in the domestic scandals of the wealthy classes. — John M. 
Mecklin, "An Introduction to Social Ethics," p. 240. 

The Challenge of the Industrial Woman 

We demand our right to come into industry on the ground that we 
are equally efficient, that we are going to undergo the same strain, that 
we are as good or better than the men ; but we are not going to sneak 
in by the back door because we are cheap. We are going to come in the 
front door with the men, and if we cannot come in on our own merits, 
we are going to stay out until our own merits entitle us to come in. — 
Quoted from a trade union girl in the "Industrial Notebook," published 
by the Y. W. C. A. 

IT. When and under What Conditions Should Children Be Allowed 
to Workf 

Work under Certain Conditions Considered Good for a Child 

A moderate amount of work that is of a proper kind, and supplies 
the right conditions, is doubtless good for the normal child, a necessary 
factor to develop him physically, intellectually, and socially. The dis- 
■ astrous effects of idleness may fully equal those which come from over- 
work. It is possible, however, to be so misled by this fact as to fail wholly 
to recognize the perils that attend the work of children in the conditions 
which are supplied by modern industry. — Parley Paul Womer, "The 
Church and the Labor Conflict," pp. 171, 172. 

Every child should work, but at work that develops, not deadens. 
Encourage work if it trains the child to be a better citizen. Stop it if 
it merely makes money for the parent or the employer. We must not 
grind the seed corn. — Owen R. Lovejoy, Secretary, National Child 
Labor Committee. 

Effect of Child Labor on Education 

Statistics gathered in five "child labor states," according to the last 
annual report of the Children's Bureau of the Department of Labor, 



12 CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WORK AND WEALTH 

showed that of 19,696 children to whom employment certificates were 
issued, 188 reported that they had never been at school at all, 1,615 ^^'^ 
not gone beyond the first grade, and more than half were in or below 
the fourth grade when they left school. Only 2.7 per cent had reached 
the eighth grade and 1.3 per cent were in high school. — The American 
Child, February, 1920, p. 283. 

Child Labor Said to Destroy Home Life 

The problem of the child and woman in industry appeared from the 
very beginning. . . . Statesmen such as Hamilton looked upon the 
mill as an industrial boon that would furnish employment for those who 
otherwise would be idle or a burden to the community. The result was 
that the early American factories were manned almost entirely by women 
and children. We have the beginnings in the New England mills of 
the family-system of labor to be observed still in the cotton mills of the 
South, where entire families are brought in from the mountains and work 
in the mills. The family exists, to be sure, but the home is largely 
sacrificed to the demands of the new economic order. — John M. Mecklin, 
"An Introduction to Social Ethics," p. 237. 

What a Child's Education Demands 

We believe that on educational grounds the age of compulsory full- 
time attendance at school should be raised in time to fifteen, and ultimately 
to sixteen, and that the ideal to be aimed at is that between the age at 
which full-time attendance at school ceases and that of eighteen, all young 
persons not engaged in occupations which are themselves directly edu- 
cational should spend ultimately not less than half their working time in 
continued school education. — Report of Archbishops' Fifth Committee 
of Inquiry: "Christianity and Industrial Problems," p. 87. 

Child Labor in Textile Trades Alleged Not Harmful 

Much has been written from time to time on the evils of the textile 
trades employing women and minors and in many cases these so-called 
evils have been greatly magnified, usually by professional writers. 
Everybody that knows mill life in the textile trades realizes that over 
ninety per cent of the employes do not actually work more than seventy- 
five per cent of the time they are in the mill. Oftentimes the fact has 
been admitted to the writer that the tediousness of being in the mill is 
more trying than the actual or physical labor done. Hence the grievance 
becomes a state of mind rather than a physical hardship. It will be realized 
that in almost all of the textile trades men, women, and minors are 
equally efficient and can do the same work. — "Production and the Shorter 
Week," Textile World Journal, Dec. 6, 1919, p. 3171. 



WHO SHOULD SUPPORT THE FAMILY? 13 

Where Work Stunts and Deadens 

In Massachusetts, according to reports quoted by Florence I. Taylor 
of the National Committee on Child Labor, it was found that the averao-e 
fourteen-year-old mill boy was decidedly below standard in weight and 
height; and that the sixteen-year-old boys did not show a normal gain 
in height over the fifteen-year-old boys, and actually decreased two and a 
half pounds in average weight. — Henry A. Atkinson, "Men and Things," 
pp. 181, 182. 



CHAPTER III 
WHO SHOULD BE EXCUSED FROM WORK? 

1. What groups of men, women, and children do not work at 
present? Which fail to work because of choice; which from neces- 
sity? 

2. Why does anybody work? If there were no economic neces- 
sity, would anybody work ? 

3. Which of the following would you excuse from productive 
labor either of hand or brain ? A person who has an inlierited inde- 
pendent income ; a person who has made his fortune ; the girl who 
"lives at home?" 

4. What is the difference between the tramp and the "globe trot- 
ter" in the effect on society ? 

5. Would you favor in peace time a compulsory work law, simi- 
lar to that adopted by some states in war time ? Why or why not ? 

6. What effect does unemployment have upon the worker as re- 
gards his sense of security and general contentment? 

7. What lines of work give seasonal employment? What can 
be done to help such workers have steady employment ? 

8. What steps would you favor on the part of the community to 
insure uninterrupted work to every worker? 

CURRENT OPINIONS ON THE QUESTIONS AT ISSUE 

I. Why Do People Work? 

The Greed of Gain 

Men work now not for food or clothing or shelter. The efforts of 
men are turned to the making of money rather than of the goods needed 
to sustain life, for once in the possession of money these goods can easily 
be obtained. . . . Work is done, goods are produced, service is per- 
formed, not because of their cultural or moral value but solely to assure 
through their production an adequate money-income. Natural wealth 

14 



WHO SHOULD BE EXCUSED FROM WORK? 15 

is left undeveloped, crops are neglected, and goods necessary for life are 
not produced if they do not bring income. — John M. Mecklin, "An Intro- 
duction to Social Ethics," p. 377. 

A Necessary Evil 

In Anglo-Saxon and Teutonic countries . . . work is univer- 
sally conceived as something which people endure for the sake of being 
paid for. Being paid off, it seems abundantly clear, is the only reason 
a sane man can have for working. After he is paid off the assumption 
is that his pleasure will begin. — Helen Marot, "The Creative Impulse in 
Industry," p. 9. 

Money Not the Only Incentive 

When I say that self-expression is a regulator of productive ac- 
tivity I mean that, like the pecuniary motive, though in a different way, 
it is the expression of an organic whole, and not necessarily a less au- 
thoritative expression. . . . The man of genius who opens new 
ways in poetry and art, the social reformer who spends his life in con- 
flict with inhuman conditions, the individual anywhere or of any sort 
who tries to realize the needs of his higher being, represents the common 
life of man in a way that may have a stronger claim than the require- 
ments of pecuniary demand. As a motive it is quite as universal as the 
latter and there is no one of us who has not the capacity to feel it. — 
Charles. Horton Cooley, "Social Process," p. 322. 

Even in our present confused and selfish scheme of economic life 
the best work is largely done under the impulse of service emulation. 
This is the case, for example, in most of the professions. Teachers are 
glad to get as much money for their work as they can, but what all 
good teachers ar-e thinking about in the course of their labors, and what 
sustains and elevates them, is the service they hope they are doing in the 
common life. The same is true of doctors, engineers, men of science, 
and let us hope, lawyers, journalists, and public officials. — Charles Hor- 
ton Cooley, "Social Process," p. 131. 

H. Who Should Not Work? 

Idleness a Possible Menace 

"The war is making clear the fact that productive efficiency is the 
greatest force not only in industry, but in war, and hence an idle class, 
whatever its excuse, is a serious handicap to any nation." — H. L. Gantt, 
"Industrial Leadership," p. 90. 

The Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic considers work the 



i6 CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WORK AND WEALTH 

duty of every citizen of the Republic, and proclaims as its motto: "He 
shall not eat who does not work," — The Russian Constitution, p. 7. 

Ill, How Can We Reduce Unemployment? 

The Extent of Unemployment 

Three hundred and sixty-five trade unions in New York reported 
in 1909 that but two thirds of their members worked the year round; 
191 reported an average dull season of three and one third months, 
while 211 showed an average loss in wages of 20.9 per cent. The figures 
for unskilled labor would, of course, be at least as bad. — Don D. Lescohier, 
"The Labor Market," p. 106. 

Mr. Hornell Hart's careful study of the employment situation in the 
United States from 1902 to 1917 shows that while our industrial popula- 
tion increased in numbers from approximately 19,500,000 workmen in 
1902 to about 30,200,000 in 1917, industry's demand for labor from 
year to year did not maintain any equivalence to the rate of growth 
of the industrial population. , . . Throughout the sixteen years 
the unemployed constituted, on the average, 9.9 per cent of the labor 
force; but this percentage reached 14.1 per cent in 1902, 14.8 per cent 
in 1908, 15.8 per cent in 1915 and 16 per cent in 1916. On the other hand, 
it fell to 5.5 per cent in 1906 and 6 per cent in 1916, and 4.7 per cent in 
1917. — Don D. Lescohier, "The Labor Market," p. 31. 

Some Explanations Discredited 

Some have suggested that there may be an oversupply of labor; 
this is one of the most persistent and mischievous half-truths of all 
the half-truth clan. One might as well say there is too much capital or 
too much land, or too much water. In a certain situation there may be 
too much land to go with the amount of water or labor or capital or 
something else available at just that place and time; it is largely a ques- 
tion of proportion. — Roy G. Blakey, "Thrift and Readjustment," The 
Annals, March, 1919, p. 30. 

"If unsteady employment were principally due to the laziness, incom- 
petence, and irregularity of workmen, the amount of unemployment would 
be approximately the same one year with another. Not many more per- 
sons are sick, disabled, delinquent, and lazy in winter than in summer; 
and certainly no more in 1904, 1908, 1912, and 1914 than in intervening 
years. And yet . . . the curve of employment shows that year after 
year there were more men idle in January than in March ; more idle 
in July than in September; fewer idle in October than in any other 



WHO SHOULD BE EXCUSED FROM WORK? 17 

month ; and millions more unemployed some years than others." — Don D. 
Lescohier, "The Labor Market," pp. 70, 71. 

Provision for Unemployed 

The most significant and drastic step in improvement has been 
taken in the dock dispute in Britain where dock workers have been 
guaranteed their minimum daily pay whether employed or not — pay for 
the period of unemployment being drawn from a common fund levied 
on the whole dock industry. — Selected. 

Even with the most complete machinery that can be devised, it 
is difficult to see how a certain amount of temporary unemployment can 
be avoided if we are content to rely entirely upon the ordinary course of 
relations between supply and demand. This margin of unemployment could, 
however, be largely reduced, if not extinguished, by State and Munici- 
pal expenditure upon work of public utility. . . . All such work 
should, therefore, be undertaken in close cooperation with Employment 
Exchanges and the local committees representing employers and em- 
ployed. It should also be confined to work of definite utility and, as 
far as possible, to undertakings of a productive nature or connected with 
the restoration of the national plant [the entire machinery of production 
and distribution]. At the same time it would be legitimate to antici- 
pate to some extent work intended to be done in the near future in 
order to give employment at the moment when it is most needed. — 
Garton Foundation Report (British). 

IV. Does Handling Seasonal Industries Necessitate Periodical 
Unemployment f 

The Menace of the Casuals 

The casual M'orkers are the true servants of humanity, and yet 
they are the ones that are passed by unnoticed, the ones that rarely 
if ever are influenced by the church. They constitute a great army 
of neglected men and women, a challenge to the church, a menace to 
society, and a danger to our commonwealth ; and all because they are 
neglected and unknown. — Henry A. Atkinson, "Men and Things," p. 153. 

The "Jungle Stake" 

It seems that when a laborer has earned a sum which road tradi- 
tion has fixed as affluence, he quits. This sum is known as a "jungle 
stake," and once it is earned the hobo discipline calls upon the casual 
to resort to a camp under a railroad bridge or along some stream, a 
"jungle," as the vernacular terms it, and live upon this "stake" until 



i8 CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WORK AND WEALTH 

it is gone. Thereupon he goes north to a new maturing crop. Weeks 
spent among the casuals by two investigators lead them to attach great 
importance to this custom. In the words of a report, "The sum which 
usage prescribes that a jungle stake should be, taken in relation to the 
wage in the district, fixes the casual's endurance on the job. Today 
between ten and fifteen dollars is a proper stake." — Carleton H. Parker, 
"The Casual Laborer and Other Essays," pp. 78, 79. 

The Problem at Its Worst 

California is a state of summer employment. The seasonal ac- 
tivity of the canneries, the state's principal industry, illustrates this 
fully. In August, 1909, California canneries employed 16,047; ^^ Feb- 
ruary, but 2,781. Of the 150,000 migratory workers employed in the 
summer, a mass of direct and indirect information indicates that fully 
100,000 face sustained winter unemployment. Driven out of the lum- 
ber and power construction camps of the Sierras by the snow, out of 
highway camps by the regular winter shut down, and out of agriculture 
by its closed winter season, with a winter's stake estimated to be on the 
average $30, these tens of thousands "lie up" for from five to six months 
in the cities of the coast. — Carleton H. Parker, "The Casual Laborer and 
Other Essays," p. 80. 

V. What Can Be Done to Solve the Unemployment Problem? 

Compulsory Work Law 

All Bulgarian citizens of both sexes are liable to labor conscription ; 
the men at the age of twenty, the women at that of eighteen. The term 
for the obligatory public labor for the men lasts sixteen, for the women 
eight months, of which at least three months will be devoted to pur- 
poses of education and preparation for the service, the rest of the time 
being employed in productive work. All those persons who are granted 
exemption from military conscription on account of some physical dis- 
ability or other reasons will enjoy the same privilege in regard to Labor 
Conscription. — "Bulgarian Labor Conscription," The New Republic, 
July 28, 1920, p. 257. 

A Suggested Permanent Solution 

The successful inauguration of the dovetailing of occupations and 
the guaranteeing of children a proper start in life require action by the 
community. The federal employment service, in order to attain adequate 
efficiency in this work, must permanently cooperate with and be influenced 
by the people of each local community in dealing with these problems. 
The state and municipal governments, and those interested in the welfare 



WHO SHOULD BE EXCUSED FROM WORK? 19 

of the workers in each community, must assume the main responsibility 
for this part of the work of reducing unemployment. — Don D. Leacohier, 
"The Labor Market," p. 135. 

How a Local Community Would Take Hold 

We must have a system of employment offices, national in scope 
and monopolizing the whole employment business, which will be so 
carefully worked out that every worker can be placed in the nearest 
job that he is able to fill and will have access to every job open to his 
particular capacity. Our system must be able to keep every workman 
employed with the maximum steadiness ; must be able to sift and classify 
the laborers, so that individuals who have a tendency to degenerate 
into casuals may be spotted and if possible held to steady employment; 
and must be able to sift out and furnish employers with the kind of men 
they want. It must dovetail the industries of each locality so as to use 
every man in the locality as steadily as possible in that locality. — Don 
D. Lescohier, "The Labor Market," p. 160. 



CHAPTER IV 

WHAT IS A FAIR RETURN FOR A 
FAIR DAY'S WORK? 

1. What is the length of the average worker's day? What is 
commonly regarded as a fair day's work? 

2. On what basis would you determine a fair day's work : quan- 
tity produced; endurance of worker; need for leisure? What other 
factors? Which of these are of the greater importance? 

3. Should the length of the day's work be fixed by law or left 
to private agreement? 

4. What should determine a fair wage, what a worker "earns" 
or what he needs ? 

5. Should women receive equal pay with men for equal work? 

6. What can be done to keep the real wage equal to the nominal 
wage? 

7. What in the way of a minimum wage law would you favor ? 

8. What more than a "fair day" and a "fair wage" would be 
necessary to satisfy the worker? 

CURRENT OPINIONS ON THE QUESTIONS AT ISSUE 

I. What Should Be Considered a Fair Day's Workf 

A Statement of Present Conditions 

The hours of labor in 90 trades which gave complete figures are as 
follows: 22 report that they enjoy the 44-hour week, 41 others work 
48 hours per week, while 27 trades work more than 50 hours per week. 
Of these the following are the most important: 

Barbers, 10-14 hours daily; retail clerks, 10 hours daily, averag- 
ing 60 to 63 hours weekly; glove makers, 8-9 hours daily, 44-50 weekly; 
marine engineers, 8-12 hours daily, for seven days per week; hotel 
and restaurant employes, over 9 hours daily for six and a fraction 
days per week; iron, steel, and tin industry, 8-12 hours; lace operatives, 
52 hours per week; laundry workers, 48-54 hours per week; masters, 

20 



A FAIR RETURN FOR A FAIR DAY'S WORK? 21 

mates and pilots, 8-13 hours daily; railway mail association, "no limit"; 
seamen, 8-12 hours daily; stage employes, "indefinite." — Figures given 
by American Federation of Labor, quoted in Trades Union News (Phila- 
delphia), Feb. 5, 1920. 

The Steel-Workers' Long Day 

Underlying the steel strike are certain conditions, the continuance 
of which is destructive of efficient democracy. The government of a 
democratic country should not remain indifferent to these conditions 
and cannot continue so when they give rise to embittered industrial 
disputes that threaten the prosperity of the whole nation. I refer to the 
outrageously long hours of labor that are still tolerated. — Henry R, 
Seager, "Needs of Industry versus Demands of Organized Labor," Sur- 
vey, January Reconstruction Number, 1920, p. 337. 

A Social Worker's Objection to the Long Day 

Whether the long day is desired by the employer, in the interests 
of profits; or by the worker, in the interest of wages; it is equally dis- 
astrous to the family life of the workers and equally disastrous to the 
American community conceived as made up of self-governing citizens. 

The question which we raise and press with all the earnestness 
at our command is whether any corporation has the right, for any con- 
siderable number of years, to "decrease the efficiency" and "lessen the 
vigor and virility" of their men ; whether any employing corporation, 
even if, for the bribe of overtime pay, the workers themselves acquiesce, 
has a right to deprive American families of the presence of the head of the 
family for thirteen hours of the day; or the right to deprive the com- 
munity of the vigor and virility of its citizens. — Edward T. Devine, 
"A Statement to the President of the Constituent Companies of the 
U. S. Steel Corporation," Survey, March 13, 1920. 

We can get into a working day of six hours all the work we are 
capable of when that work is monotonous — attending machinery and 
general work in a factory. 

The six-hour day would also solve the question of the education 
of the boy and girl on their first leaving school ; it would also solve the 
question of their physical training; it would solve the question of military 
training, so that we could have a trained citizen army; and it would 
solve the question of the outlook on life of our workers. — Lord Lever- 
hulme, "The Six-Hour Day," pp. 17, 31. 

A Church Pronouncement 

By reasonable hours we mean hours sufficiently short not merely 
to leave him unexhausted, but to allow him sufficient leisure and energy 



22 CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WORK AND WEALTH 

for home life, for recreation, for the development through study of his 
mind and spirit, and for participation in the affairs of the community. — 
"Christianity and Industrial Problems," p. 75. 

One Day of Rest 

The Conference believes that experience has demonstrated that in 
fixing hours of labor in industrial establishments at a point consistent 
with the health of the employes, and with proper opportunity for rest and 
recreation, there should in all cases be provision for one day's rest in 
seven. — Report of President's Industrial Conference. 

In the interest of the family life of wage-earners, to assure to fathers 
opportunity of companionship with their wives and children, we Ameri- 
cans, in the twentieth century, have to strive to get by statute that which 
was laid upon the race by the Commandments, namely, one day's rest 
in seven. This was commanded as of equal importance with the in- 
junction, "Thou shalt not kill." — Florence Kelley, "Modern Industry and 
the Family," p. 12. 

Reasons for a Forty-Eight-Hour Week 

The fact is unmistakable that the most reliable evidence at present 
points toward an approximation of the eight-hour working day as afford- 
ing for a considerable variety of occupations and for conscientious 
workers the best condition for high productivity. — Frederic S. Lee, 
"The Human Machine," p. 36. 

The Conference believes that in most factories, mines, and work- 
shops, and especially in repetitive work, the present trend of practice 
favors a schedule of hours of not more than forty-eight hours per week. 
— Report of President's Industrial Conference, pp. 33, 34. 

We submit that the tendency to shorter hours of labor cannot be 
supported indefinitely if the world's work is to be done. Relief from 
tedious hours and hard conditions came naturally and logically when 
it was demonstrated that labor performed in a state of exhaustion was not 
humane, productive, nor profitable. But if the judgment of mankind 
can be relied upon, forty-eight hours of labor, daily, within one week, 
for work not excessively exhausting nor perilous is the medium between 
sloth and an oppressive day's work. — "Publishers Oppose the 44-Hour 
Week," N. Y. Times, April 24, 1920. 

Eight-Hour Day Condemned 

The cost of living, after all, is the great problem. It is not possible 
to reduce the cost by imposing on this country an eight-hour day which 
would reduce production or increase costs, nor is it possible by national 
unionization and the conferring of extraordinary powers on the unions 



A FAIR RETURN FOR A FAIR DAY'S WORK? 23 

to bring about that efficiency which is also a necessary element in in- 
creasing production and reducing the cost of living. — Industry, Oct. i, 
1919, p. 15. 

Claims Workers Like Long Hours with a Basic Day 

"What of the demand of the eight-hour day?" I asked the employ- 
ment manager of one of the largest independent corporations. He 
replied, "I have had thousands of foreigners apply to me for jobs, and 
I can say that the majority of them, as one of the conditions for going to 
work, have insisted that they be given an opportunity to work extra 
time even on Sundays. They consider a ten-hour job better than an 
eight-hour one, and if they are given a twelve-hour job they consider 
that better still. The reason is they want the time and one-half. So 
many of them have wanted this opportunity that there was no other 
thought about it until the labor agitators appeared." — A. J. Hain, "Agi- 
tators Sow Vicious Doctrines," Iron Trade Review, Oct. 2, 1919, p. 914. 

Shorter Hours, More Production 

Not only did we produce as many sets of wheels in eight hours as 
we formerly did in ten, but there was a saving of seven and one-half 
cents per set in the labor cost. The earnings of the workmen for the 
shorter day were five per cent greater than for the longer shift. So 
shortening the working day combined with the resetting of the rates 
gave the workmen more wages and the factory the same amount of 
output. — C. A. Marston, "More Output from a Shorter Day," Industrial 
Management, February, 1919, p. 140. 

And what has been the result of these mountain peaks of increased 
costs and increased difficulties of production in the woolen industry? 

The answer, although surprising, is entirely logical and credible. 
An official of the American Woolen Company declares that the net re- 
sult has been an improved quality of output. 

American mills are today operating under conditions of highest 
efficiency ever attained, in the opinion of men competent to judge. — 
Newton A. Fuessle, "Clothing the World," Outlook, December 31, 1919, 
P- 593- 

Employes Guarantee Production 

The employes of the American Multigraph Company have guaran- 
teed to maintain production at the present rate per day. If production 
falls below the present standard after a thorough trial of at least six 
months they will agree to return to the nine-hour work day with the 
present rate of wage payment. This action was taken by the "congress" 



24 CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WORK AND WEALTH 

elected by the employes after a committee had made a careful study 
of the present rate of production and methods of increasing it. In 
October, 1919, the hours were reduced from ten to nine at their request, 
but production remained the same. — New York Evening Post, May 5, 
1920. 

II. What Should Be Considered a Fair Wage? 

Present Range of Incomes 

Income tax figures for 1917 show that there were 1,832,000 per- 
sons with incomes above $2,000. Of these 838,000 received from $2,000 
to $3,000, 375,000 from $3,000 to $4,000, 185,000 from $4,000 to $5,000, 
106,000 from $5,000 to $6,000, 24,536 from $9,000 to $10,000, 16,806 
from $20,000 to $25,000, 7,087 from $40,000 to $50,000, 6,208 from 
$100,000 to $500,000, 315 from $500,000 to $1,000,000, 100 from $1,000,- 
000 to $2,000,000, 8 from $4,000,000 to $5,000,000, 4, $5,000,000 or 
over. — Summarized from address by Congressman A. J. Griffin, Con- 
gressional Record, May 3, 1920. 

Some Extremes in "Wage Scales 

Among the highest paid union workers are the structural iron work- 
ers who receive an average wage of $39.16 for a forty-four week. The 
building laborers average $26.55 ^or an average week of forty-six hours. 
Book and job compositors average $26.88 for a forty-eight hour week. 
In the steel industry average wages vary from $112.27 P^J" week for 
the rollers in the sheet mills to $26.32 for iron handlers and loaders 
in the blast furnaces. Average earnings of bituminous coal miners were 
below $23 a week during 1919. A group of 286,000 section men on the 
railroads averaged $77.80 for a full month at the present rate. Another 
group of "unskilled workers" numbering 198,000 averaged $87.60. Both 
groups averaged full time during that month. 

A recent report of the U. S. Women in Industry Service stated that 
$450 is considered a liberal estimate of the yearly income below which 
half the women workers in Philadelphia candy factories fall. Early 
in 1920 the New York State Consumers' League made a study of the 
wages of a group of 500 women employed in New York state : 88 per 
cent of these women received less than $16 a week. Only 4.8 per cent 
received over $20. — Data gathered by the Commission on the Church 
and Social Service. 

Suggested Standard for Determining a Fair Wage 

The wages paid to a man of average industry and capacity should at 
least enable him to marry, to live in a decent house, and to provide the 
necessaries of physical efficiency for a normal family, while allowing 



A FAIR RETURN FOR A FAIR DAY'S WORK? 25 

a reasonable margin for contingencies and recreation. — Report of the 
Twenty British Quaker Employers. 

By a living wage we mean not merely a wage which is sufficient 
for physical existence, but a wage adequate to maintain the worker, 
his wife and family in health and honor, and to enable him to dispense 
with the subsidiary earnings of his children up to the age of sixteen 
years. — "Christianity and Industrial Problems," p. 75. 

Considered from the standpoint of public interest, it is fundamental 
that the basic wages of all employes should be adequate to maintain the 
employe and his family in reasonable comfort, and with adequate oppor- 
tunity for the education of his children. When the wages of any group 
fall below this standard for any length of time, the situation becomes 
dangerous to the well-being of the state. — Report of the President's 
Industrial Conference, p. 37. 

A Married Man's Wage for a Single Man 

Just as the woman worker who lives with her parents has a right 
to a wage sufficient to maintain her away from home, so the unmarried 
adult male has a right to a family living wage. If only married 
men get the latter wage they will be discriminated against in the matter 
of employment. To prevent this obviously undesirable condition, it is 
necessary that a family living wage be recognized as the right of all 
adult male workers. No other arrangement is reasonable in our present 
industrial system. In a competitive regime the standard wage for both 
the married awd the unmarried man is necessarily the same. — John A. 
Ryan, "Distributive Justice," pp. 374, 375. 

Effect o£ Low Wages on Home-Making 

Vast numbers of men never found families at all because they fear 
to marry vipon insufficient wages insecurely held by reason of the pre- 
carious nature of many employments ; or because their health is de- 
stroyed before they reach an economic position which seems to them to 
justify marriage; or because the girls whom they would gladly marry 
are worn out and broken down in the service of industry. — Florence 
Kelley, "Modern Industry and the Family," p. 6. 

Two Great Employers Plead for Higher Wages 

Cheap wages make a cheap boss. A man who will shave wages will 
shave material. . . . It is impossible to talk about doing business in 
a scientific way until you have intelligent people to work with you. 

Your coworkers must be intelligent ; they cannot be intelligent unless 



26 CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WORK AND WEALTH 

they have enough to live on. The underpaid employe is not vicious — 
although I can see why he might be — but it is simply impossible for 
him to give attention to business until food, clothing, and shelter are 
taken care of. ... A minimum wage is not an act of compassion, 
but the primary evidence of a desire to do business. — "Why the Employ- 
ees Run Our Business," by Edward A. Filene, System, Jan., 1919, p. 81. 

But, in the years gone by, I seriously doubt many times if labor 
has received its fair share of the prosperity of this great country. We, 
as manufacturers, have got to open our eyes to a wider vision of the 
present and the future with reference to our workmen. We have got to 
devise ways and means by which capital and labor, that have so often 
been termed synonymous, shall share equally, not in theory, but in prac- 
tice. — Charles M. Schwab, in The Annals of the American Academy of 
Political and Social Science, January, 1919, p. 158. 

Real and Nominal Wages 

Economists distinguish between nominal wages, or the actual amount 
of money paid, and real wages, or the purchasing power which the money 
represents. The real wage may fluctuate very materially while the 
nominal wage remains the same. — Selected. 

Thinks "Pay" Will Not Satisfy 

But as long as mineral owners extract royalties, and exceptionally 
productive mines pay thirty per cent to absentee shareholders, there 
is no valid answer to a demand for higher wages. For if the community 
pays anything at all to those who do not work, it can afford to pay more to 
those who do. The naive complaint, that workmen are never satisfied, 
is, therefore, strictly true. It is true, not only of workmen, but of all 
classes in a society which conducts its affairs on the principle that wealth, 
instead of being proportioned to function, belongs to those who can get 
it. They are never satisfied, nor can they be satisfied. For as long as 
they make that principle the guide of their individual lives and of their 
social order, nothing short of infinity could bring them satisfaction. — 
R. H. Tawney, "The Sickness of an Acquisitive Society," p. 24. 

Examples of the Establishment of a Living V/age 

Fifteen states have minimum wage laws for women workers. A com- 
mission is appointed to study conditions in various industries and decide 
what the minimum wage for the different industries shall be. The 
commission for Washington has recently decreed that $18 a week shall 
be the minimum for women workers in hotels. Legislation authorizing 
the establishing of minimum wages for women has been enacted in Mani- 
toba, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Quebec. — Selected. 



A FAIR RETURN FOR A FAIR DAY'S WORK? 27 

III. Should Women Get Equal Pay with Men for Equal Work? 

Needs of Women 

The theory is often advanced that women workers do not need to 
receive a living wage since the women live at home and are working 
for "pin money." Investigations made in New York State show that 
eighty per cent of the women in factories were contributing to the sup- 
port of someone else. — Data furnished by the Consumers' League. 

An Analysis of the Problem 

The dilemma is simply this: If women receive unequal pay for equal 
work it is unfair and injurious to themselves and creates a type of com- 
petition which is unfair and injurious to the men; if, on the other hand, 
women receive equal pay for equal work is that, too, not unfair and in- 
jurious to men who as family breadwinners still bear the heavier burden? 
If taxation is considered fair when graduated in accordance with the 
economic capacities of the payer, why not wages graduated in accord- 
ance with the economic burdens of the payee? — R. M. Maclver, "Labor 
in the Changing World," pp. 205, 206. 

Merchants' Association Opposes Equal Pay 

We have always considered the two groups, male and female, as 
distinct. It has been our opinion, borne out by long practice, that they 
must be considered distinct for this purpose. The doctrine of "equal pay 
for equal work" does not apply. 

There are inherent differences between male and female workers 
which affect their value to industry and which must be taken into con- 
sideration in connection with the question of equal wages. Among 
these differences are : 

1. The field of work is much larger for men than for women. 

2. The average life in industry for men is many times longer than 
for women. 

3. Steadiness is considered greater for men than for women. 

4. The attitude toward the work is different. 

— "Increased Employment of Women in Industry," report by Mer- 
chants' Association of New York, pp. 15, 16. 

A Statement Favoring Equal Pay 

Women doing similar work or the same work as men should receive 
equal pay for equal work, in the sense that pay should be in proportion 
to efficient output. This covers the principle that on systems of payment 
by results, equal payment should be made to women as to men for an 
equal amount of work done. 



28 CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WORK AND WEALTH 

In every case in which the employer maintains that a woman's work 
produces less than a man's, the burden of proof should rest on the em- 
ployer, who should also have to produce evidence of the lower value of 
the woman's work, to which the fixed sum to be deducted from the man's 
rate for the particular job throughout the whole of the industry should 
strictly correspond. — Report of Committee to Investigate Wages of 
Women Railway Clerks (British), Raihvay Service Journal, November 
15, 1919, p. 232. 

(Equal pay for equal work is a standard endorsed by all labor 
organizations.) 



CHAPTER V 

WHAT IS THE RIGHT ATTITUDE TOWARD 
PROPERTY AND INCOME? 

1. Has a person a right to all he can get? 

2. Is there or is there not a limit beyond which a man cannot go 
and be fair and Christian? If so, what limit should society place 
upon income? How? 

3. By what means do people acquire income without earning it ? 
Has a man a right to income which he has not earned? Why or 
why not ? 

4. Which is right in the following? 

"A man has a right to do what he pleases with his own." 
"A man owns nothing — all belongs to society." 

5. Why does society protect property? Should it be for the 
protection of the "rights of the individual" or to serve social ends? 

6. What do we mean by Christian stewardship? How is it re- 
lated to the Socialists' doctrine that all wealth used for production 
should be owned by society? 

7. Some Christians say : "I give my tithe to the Lord, and what 
I do with the rest is no one's affair." Others say: "As a Chris- 
tian, I can spend personally for clothes, recreation, education, and 
other things, only as much as will make me more efficient in serving 
the common good." Which is in accord with the demands of Chris- 
tian stewardship? 

8. How can a person know where to draw the line between 
harmful asceticism and selfish indulgence? 

9. Can a man atone for excessive income or for acquiring in- 
come without earning it by giving to social causes? Why do you 
think so? 

10. Which is of more value to society : the large gifts of the few 
or the small gifts of the many? 

29 



30 CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WORK AND WEALTH 

11. From the Christian point of view what is a "sound invest- 
ment" ? Has a Christian a right to receive dividends from any in- 
vestment without recognizing his responsibihty for the conditions 
under which the money was made? If he finds the conditions are 
unjust, what should he do about it ? 

12. If it comes to a choice, is the Christian under obHgation 
to choose the investment with the more just conditions and the 
larger service possibilities, even if it means smaller returns? Is 
he obligated to patronize the higher priced concern if the working 
conditions there are better? Why do you hold your opinion? 

13. When may a person consider his obligation in relation to his 
property and income fully discharged ? 

CURRENT OPINIONS ON THE QUESTIONS AT ISSUE 

I. What Are the Extremes of Poverty and Wealth? 

Range of Income 

Income tax figures for 1917 show that there were 1,832,000 per- 
sons with incomes above $2,000. Of these 838,000 received from $2,000 
to $3,000, 375,000 from $3,000 to $4,000, 185,000 from $4,000 to $5,000, 
106,000 from $5,000 to $6,000, 24,536 from $9,000 to $10,000, 16,806 
from $20,000 to $25,000, 7,087 from $40,000 to $50,000, 6,208 from 
$100,000 to $500,000, 315 from $500,000 to $1,000,000, 100 from $1,000,- 
000 to $2,000,000, 8 from $4,000,000 to $5,000,000, 4, $5,000,000 or 
over. — Summarized from address by Congressman A. J. Griffin, Con- 
gressional Record, May 3, 1920. 

The richest hundredth of the people possess approximately 15 per 
cent of the income and 47 per cent of the wealth. — W. I. King, "The 
Wealth and Income of the People of the United States," (1915) pp. 
231, 232. 

Producing Millionaires 

For one thing, peace urgency has replaced war urgency and we are 
not willing to bid for peace labor as we had to bid for war labor. For 
another thing, the employing class is immensely more powerful than it 
was in 1914. . . . There is more money at its command. Eighteen thou- 
sand new millionaires are the war's legacy. This money capacity is more 
thoroughly unified than ever. In 1914, we had 30,000 banks, functioning 
in a great degree in independence of each other. Then came the Federal 
Reserve Act and gave jis the machinery for consolidation and the cmcr- 



ATTITUDE TOWARD PROPERTY AND INCOME ? 31 

gency of five years' war furnished the hammer blows to weld the struc- 
ture into one. — Roger W. Babson, quoted in The Neiv Majority, June 
12, 1920. 

The Extremes of Poverty 

In the southern mill towns the companies usually own all the houses 
in which the people live. These houses are generally one-story buildings 
with a porch extending along the entire front. All of them are alike, 
and most of them are painted gray or drab. The streets of the mill 
village are unpaved and in most places cut into gullies by the rains. 
In a few places running water, bathtubs, electricity, and other modern 
conveniences have been provided, but these are the rare exceptions. 
More often the houses are barren of all comforts, and living is reduced 
to the lowest possible terms. . . . At an investigation made by 
a state commission in Atlanta, Georgia, one of the men testified that he, 
his wife, five of his children, and his wife's sister all worked in the 
mill; there were three younger children who stayed at home, the oldest 
one of the three acting as housekeeper and nurse. The improvements that 
most people expect as a matter of course, such as fireproofing, sanitary 
plumbing, lighting, heating, storage, and bathing and washing facilities, 
are utterly unknown. — Henry A. Atkinson, "Men and Things," pp. 40, 41. 

If you should visit the coal-mining community, you would first of 
all be impressed with the desolation of the place. The village is 
an ugly, straggling affair with nothing to add to its beauty or hide its 
deformities. Nearly all the houses are built alike, two and three rooms 
being the average size. . . . The fences are of rough pickets and so 
broken and out of repair that, as one person visiting the coal town 
for the first time said, "The pickets look like broken teeth in an old, 
dried-up skull." There are very few flowers or gardens, and the deep 
black mud of the winter-time, the black smoke and the dust of the dry 
season during the summer deepen the sense of desolation one feels in 
the midst of these villages. — Henry A. Atkinson, "Men and Things," 
pp. 67, 68. 

Nearly half the total population of the city (Passaic, N. J.) is 
crowded into one-sixth its area in the workers' section, and it is gener- 
ally admitted that the housing situation is serious. ... In casual 
visits we found a woman mill worker's family of seven living in three 
tiny rooms, two of which were unventilated and pitch dark. An Italian 
girl who works in the Botany Mills was living with a large family of 
brothers and sisters in the basement of a tumbledown frame house. 

The effect of the squalor of the Dundee district is heightened by the 
proximity of the "hill" section of Passaic, which is a residence suburb 



32 CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WORK AND WEALTH 

with roomy, comfortable houses set in wide lawns. The commuters and 
others who live in these houses are not troubled by the sight of the 
slums, however, because on account of the transportation arrangements 
they are entirely isolated from them. — Eloise Shellabarger, "The Shawled 
Women of Passaic," Survey, July 3, 1920, p. 466. 

Many estimates place the total number of persons who receive 
some sort of relief in a single year in New York City above ten per cent. 
It seems probable, therefore, that, taking the country as a whole, nearly 
five per cent of our population require some sort of help every year. 
Upon the basis of this and other facts it has been estimated that 
the number of people in the United States living below the poverty line 
is more than 10,000,000 in years of average prosperity. . 

Mr. Charles Booth . . . says that about thirty per cent of 
the population of London live below the poverty line, and Mr. B. S. 
Rowntree found in the English city of York about the same proportion. — 
Charles A. Elwood, "Sociology and Modern Social Problems" (1913), 
pp. 284, 285. 

11. Is There Any Moral Difference between Earned and Unearned 
Income? 

"Unearned Income" 

Economists distinguish between earned income, i.e. income secured 
by rendering specific service, and unearned income — for example, in- 
terest, rent, and profits. — Selected. 

Extent of Unearned Income 

The official definition [of millionaires] is based upon studies which 
show that when incomes reach and pass $100,000 their great bulk comes 
from dividends and interest on investments — in other words from "pos- 
sessions." The average for the group of incomes shows 59.7 per cent 
from dividends and 13.68 per cent from interest, which leaves but 26.62 
per cent coming from all the other sources classified as wages and salaries, 
business, partnerships, rents, and royalties and profits from sales of 
real estate, stocks, and bonds. On this basis, then, millionaires in the 
United States increased from 2,348 in 1914 to 3,824 in 1915, and to 
6,633 in 1916. — Literary Digest, March 6, 1920, p. 52. 

Figures secured from income tax returns show that one man in 
the United States earned last year a net income of $34,936,604 and 
another $5,794,559- There were eight persons with incomes from $4,- 
000,000, to $5,000,000, 5 with incomes from $3,000,000 to $4,000,000, 67 
with net incomes between $1,000,000 and $1,500,000, 315 with net in- 



ATTITUDE TOWARD PROPERTY AND INCOME ? 33 

comes between $500,000 and $1,000,000. In all there are 460 persons in 
the United States whose aggregate net income was $520,835,914. — 
Summarized from address by Congressman A. J. Griffin, Congres- 
sional Record, May 3, 1920, p. 7,004. 

Great Incomes Considered a Boon to Society 

The whole theory that a comparatively few people enjoy most of the 
benefits of existing wealth breaks down completely under examination. 
The fact is that in proportion to the total product the share consumed 
by the rich is insignificant. The large incomes go back into industry 
to increase production for the public market, and the benefits inure 
mainly to the public. — George E. Roberts, quoted in Iron Trade Review, 
Nov. 6, 19 19, p. 1272. 

III. What Should Determine the Size of a Man's Income? 

A Roman Catholic Authority Considers a Standard Maximum 
Essential 

A maximum living allowance is as essential to spiritual welfare 
as a minimum allowance is for bodily comfort, asserts Father John A. 
Ryan, who in "The Church and Socialism" holds that a twelve-room 
house is sufficient for an average-sized family of husband and wife and 
four or five children and an income of $10,000 enough for annual expen- 
diture. 

When the demands of health and moderate comfort have been 
supplied additional sense-satisfactions contribute little or nothing to the 
development of body, heart, or mind. They necessitate an expenditure 
of time, energy, and resources that might be employed in building up 
the higher and rational side of man. They put a damaging influence 
upon morals, mind, health, and happiness. 

"The belief that men can live noble, religious, and intellectual lives 
in the presence of abundant material satisfaction is well called by the 
economist, Charles Perin, the most terrible seduction of our time." — 
John A. Ryan, Review of "The Church and Socialism," Literary Digest, 
March 6, 1920, p. 37. 

A Captain of Industry Thinks Some Men Worth a Million a 
Year 

I pay the managers of our works practically no salary. I make 
them partners in the business, only I don't let them share in the efforts 
of any other men. For example, if a man is manager of a blast furnace 
department he makes profit out of the successful conduct of his depart- 



34 CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WORK AND WEALTH 

ment, but I don't allow him to share in the prosperity of some other able 
man in some other department of the establishment. I give him a per- 
centage of what he saves or makes in the department immediately under 
his own control and management. . . . And I pay in what I call 
bonuses to the various superintendents and managers of the different 
establishments more money for their successful management than I pay 
the stockholders of the concern in dividends. . . . But I don't mind 
saying that forty, fifty, sixty, a hundred thousand dollars a year for 
these men is not infrequent. . . . And I am glad to tell you that 
in carrying out that principle Mr. Grace has earned considerably more 
than $1,000,000 a year. ... It would run into several millions 
a year. — Charles M. Schwab, A''. Y. Times, March 21, 1920. 

IV. How Far Does the Philanthropic Use of Income Answer 
Objections to the Method of Its Acquisitionf 

The Demand of the Social Creed of the Churches 

The Church has long measured a man by his use of his wealth, has 
demanded that he should hold it as a sacred trust. The Christian con- 
science is now applying the same standard to the acquisition of wealth. 
We are beginning to care more how a man earns his wealth than how 
he spends it. The Christian conscience can no longer accept income at 
the cost of the lives of others. Those who take money that is made at the 
cost of wasted health and moral destruction stand before God as those 
who live off the lives of their fellows. 

It is the task of Christian statesmanship in the industrial world 
so to organize the industrial process that it shall conserve not only the 
physical but also the moral and spiritual welfare of the workers. Then 
is the wealth-making process religious. — Harry F. Ward, "The Social 
Creed of the Churches," pp. 176, 177. 

Dangers of Philanthropy 

. Private organized charity is an obstacle in the way of 
justice. If we had no such organizations men would think of funda- 
mental reforms; they would think of ways and means to abolish the 
causes of poverty, rather than the consequences of it. I know of many 
instances where organized charity opposed practical movements, like 
motherhood pensions, minimum wages, and housing reforms. Why? 
It seems rather hard to say it, but I believe it was because the class 
which administers charity is the class responsible for poverty. It is 
responsible through the unjust economic conditions which this class 
perpetuates. And it is the very halo which organized charity throws 
around itself that makes it doubly difilicult for us to penetrate to the 
real cause of industrial injustice and put an end to it. — F. Stuart Chapin, 



ATTITUDE TOWARD PROPERTY AND INCOME ? 35 

"Democracy and Class Relations," Publication of the American Socio- 
logical Society, Vol. XIV, pp. 106, 107. 

These public gifts of millionaires debauch the character of cities and 
states more effectively than the private gifts of unreflecting donors the 
character of individuals. For, whereas many, if not most, of the private 
recipients of charity are victims of misfortune or of lack of opportunity, 
and are not fully responsible for the evil plight in which they stand, 
this is not the case of an organized self-governing community, a city or 
a state. Such a society is able, out of its own resources, if it chooses to 
secure and use them, to supply for itself all its own legitimate needs. 
It has a far larger self-sufficiency for meeting all ordinary emergencies 
and for following an economy of self-development and progress, than 
has the individual citizen. For it can supply its needs out of the social 
income which its collective life is constantly assisting to produce, out 
of that very surplus which, wrongly allowed to flow, unearned, into 
the coffers of rich individuals, is the very fund used for this debasing 
public charity. — J. A. Hobson, "Work and Wealth, a Human Valuation," 
p. 297. 

Every increase in philanthropic machinery delays the natural ten- 
dency in democracy to take upon itself responsibility for unfortunate 
conditions incident to its existence. Social maladjustment cannot be 
remedied by personal gratuities. 

There is another reason for the collapse of philanthropy. Charity 
does not return to the worker that part of the value of his labor which 
is taken from him by the exploitation of capital. A pitiable small per- 
centage of this surplus profit returns, in the form of philanthropy, to 
the workers, who, to make both ends meet, should have received it in 
the first place as a just recompense of their toil. — Percy S. Grant, "Fair 
Play for the Workers," pp. 33, 34. 

A Defense of Philanthropy 

The whole purpose back of modern philanthropic movements is 
not to throw dust in the eyes of the sufferers from our social arrange- 
ments, but to alleviate the misery incident to the poor working of all 
economic and social machinery, and ultimately to remove the conditions 
that produce injustice. . . . Some of the philanthropists may be- 
lieve that a fundamental change in our economic and social life is neces- 
sary. Others believe that it is not necessary. Both, however, are 
working to perfect the machinery so that the maladjustments may be 
eliminated and a more perfect democracy result, so as to bring about 
equality of opportunity and an attitude of service of every member of 
society to every other member. — J. L. Gillin, "Modern Philan- 



36 CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WORK AND WEALTH 

thropic Movements in Their Relation to Democracy," Publication of the 
American Sociological Society, Vol. XIV, p. 119. 

V. How Far Has Society a Right to Interfere with Private 
Ownership? 

Community's Claim on Property Considered Paramount 

We believe that in future the community vi^ill claim a greater part 
of "surplus profits" in the form of taxation, and v^^e believe that such 
a development v^ould be right. But whether this takes place or not, we 
think that profits, as well as the businesses from which they are derived, 
should be regarded as a trust and that due weight should be given to the 
views of others, including employes, in deciding how best that trust can 
be discharged. — "Quakerism in Industry," p. 141. 

To "Do As We Please with Our Own" Declared Unchristian 

In particular, the doctrine sometimes advanced, that a man is free 
to do what he likes with his own, that all men are justified in following 
their own pecuniary interests to the fullest extent allowed by law, and 
that social well-being will incidentally, but certainly, result from their 
efforts to further their own self-interest, is definitely anti-Christian. — 
"Christianity and Industrial Problems," p. 17. 

An Attack on the Present Profit System 

A profit-seeking system will always breed profiteers. It cannot be 
cleansed or sweetened or ennobled. There is only one way to Christian- 
ize it, and that is, to abolish it. . . . 

This whole present industrial and commercial world, ingenious, 
mighty, majestic, barbaric, disorderly, brutal, must be lifted from its 
basis of selfish, competitive profit-seeking and placed squarely on a basis of 
cooperative production for human needs. — S. G. Bland, "The New 
Christianity," p. 47. 

Private Property Right if Well Administered 

I most firmly believe that the capitalistic system is the best if it is 
grasped in its entirety, if it is understood, and if it is administered 
with skill and intelligence. I think it is perfectly possible to balance the 
relations between the man who works with his money and the man who 
works with his hands, so that each will be content, not with his share, 
for that is impossible, but with the fairness of the division, and will be 
entirely satisfied that when a dispute arises it is the detail and not the 
system that is at fault.— William R. Basset, "When the Workmen Help 
You Manage," p. 249. 



ATTITUDE TOWARD PROPERTY AND INCOME ? 37 

VI. How Can a Person Determine the Use to Be Made of Prop- 
erty and Income? 

The Biblical Standard 

It is the message of the New Testament that work is a duty which is 
incumbent upon all, that the members of a Christian community should 
aim at giving rather than getting, and that they should seek the service 
of others rather than the personal profit of themselves. — "Christianity 
and Industrial Problems," p. 17. 

Opinion of Twenty Quaker Employers 

In this connection we would ask all employers to consider very 
carefully whether their style of living and personal expenditure are 
restricted to what is needed to ensure the efficient performance of their 
functions in society. More than this is waste, and is, moreover, a great 
cause of class divisions. — "Quakerism in Industry," p. 142. 

No Common Standard Possible 

The amount a man should spend each year, and the objects to which 
his expenditure should be devoted, depend for the most part on facts 
which are very imperfectly known to any outsider, and some of which 
can be known only by himself. One's means, one's liabilities, the num- 
ber and needs of those for whom one is responsible, one's own capacity 
for using and enjoying as distinct from mere desire for plutocratic 
display — these and many other items enter into the calculus. What is 
extravagant in this person may well be parsimonious in that, not only 
because the one is rich and the other poor, or because the one has de- 
pendents and the other has none, but because a higher scale of living 
may be of genuine social advantage in some cases and of social disad- 
vantage in others, or because that which is in one person an added re- 
finement of life may be in another a vulgar piece of ostentation. — Her- 
bert L. Stewart, "The Ethics of Luxury and Leisure," American Jour- 
nal of Sociology, November, 1918, pp. 249-250. 

Some Suggestions to Christian Investors 

We, the undersigned, in view of our responsibility as stockholders 
and beneficiaries through shares in corporations, feel compelled to state 
our conviction : 

1. That the first charge on industry should be the adequate and 
honorable compensation of those engaged in it. 

2. That the ultimate control in industry should pass from the owners 
of capital to those who work by hand or brain. 

In so far as we may have power or influence we will use it to carry 



38 CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WORK AND WEALTH 

this belief into effect in the determination of questions concerning wages 
and working conditions in those companies in which we hold stock. Fur- 
thermore, we will seek and support such reorganization of industry as 
will promote the highest good, even though it may mean the ultimate 
disappearance of any separate class of shareholders, and we are pre- 
pared to accept such personal loss as may arise from this process of 
reorganization. We invite the cooperation of all stockholders to this end. 
— "The Stockholders' Statement," The World Tomorrow, April, 1920, 
pp. 117, 118. 

Mr. Babson characterized the careless exercise of the proxy privilege 
as one of the greatest curses of our time, and commended a lady in the 
audience who said that it was her custom to send back with her signed 
proxy a statement to the effect that she is far more interested in the 
conditions surrounding the workers in the industry than the amount 
of dividends which the factory in question is paying. Mr. Babson said 
that this was a valuable constructive suggestion, and that if stockholders 
generally were to take a similar stand, it would do much to react to the 
good of the workers. — "Industrial Problems Discussed in Boston," 
Churchman, March 2y, 1920, p. 21. 



CHAPTER VI 

WHAT SHOULD THE PARTIES TO INDUSTRY DO 
TO SECURE THEIR RIGHTS? 

1. Who are the parties to industry? What are the reasons for 
antagonism between them ? 

2. Under what conditions are strikes and lockouts justifiable? 

3. Is the use of physical force ever justifiable on either side? 
What moral difference is there, if any, between the use of force 
in war and in labor disputes ? 

4. With which of the following do you agree? 

The worker has a right to stay out of the union and deal 
individually with his employer. 

The union has a right in the interests of its own preser- 
vation to insist that the "closed shop" be maintained and only 
union men employed in a particular industry. 

5. What do you think of the union's claim that a man who enjoys 
working conditions secured by the union's effort is under obligation 
to join the union? 

6. Is it an "open shop" if men are discharged for union activity? 
Under what circumstances has the employer the right to discharge 
men who belong to the union ? 

7. If industrial peace be secured without justice, how does this 
concern the public? 

8. What attitude should the public take toward the inconven- 
iences caused by the effort of capital and labor to secure their rights ? 

9. Suppose capital and labor should combine to the disadvantage 
of the consumer, what should be done ? How can the interests of the 
public be safeguarded ? 

10. Is there hope of partnership, or are the rights of labor and 
capital irreconcilable? When, if ever, has the community a right 
to compel settlement ? 

39 



40 CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WORK AND WEALTH 

CURRENT OPINIONS ON THE QUESTIONS AT ISSUE 

I. What Are the Causes of Industrial Disorders? 

The Worker's "Psychology" 

A good deal has been said about the worker's psychology, as though 
the worker were some strange wild beast with a peculiar psychology 
all his own, quite different from the psychology of employers and mana- 
gers. It is because the psychology of the worker is the same as the 
psychology of the employer and the manager that strikes and lockouts 
occur with such distressing frequency. 

The present-day movement for industrial democracy is a partial 
recognition of the fundamental psychological phenomenon that industrial 
fatigue is not simply an engineering question to be stated mathemati- 
cally in foot-pounds per hour or even a physiological question having to 
do with calories burned up in the body. — Royal Meeker, "Employees' 
Representation in Management of Industry," American Economic 
Review, March, 1920, pp. 91, 92. 

The Causes of Strikes 

In Canada, an analysis of the Report on Strikes and Lockouts, 
1901-16, published by the Department of Labor, reveals the fact that in 
disputes concerning wage increases the average time-loss through strikes 
per employe affected was 19 days, in those concerning hours 24 days, 
but in those concerning union recognition it was actually 75 days. The 
disputes on this ground were therefore, though fewer in number, much 
more bitter. This is very significant. It is also very significant that 
the most difficult "labor troubles" which the U. S. Government faced 
during the war, for example, in shipbuilding, were due to the demand of 
the unions, and the resistance to that demand, for recognition and a share 
in control. — R. M. Maclver, "Labor in the Changing World," pp. 34, 35. 

Monotony of Machine Labor Held as Cause 

What is there in the nature of the present-day industrial employ- 
ment that has bred such universal restlessness and discontent? The 
demand for higher wages, for shorter hours, for improved working con- 
ditions, a share in the management and all of the other exciting causes 
of strikes and labor disturbances are only symptoms of a deeper indus- 
trial malady which the highest wages and the shortest hours may relieve 
but fail to cure. The munition workers bought bungalows, touring 
cars, and diamonds. But they, like a million workers of today, were 
sick at heart. They were dissatisfied — but why? There is but one 
answer. Our social unrest is a disease of the soul and not of the 



PARTIES TO INDUSTRY— THEIR RIGHTS? 41 

pocketbook. Our workingmen are sick of the monotony of machine 
labor. . 

The men today are not driven — far from it; they are salved, 
and petted, and coaxed to an unheard-of degree. . . . But the new 
era has put personality in a steel niche, and it must stay put, else large- 
scale production is impossible. The strikers on our streets today are 
men entering a blind protest against a system that has taken the fun 
and romance out of their vi^ork, even though it has brought them a 
standard of living superior to the days of individualism. . . . Some plan 
must be found whereby men may become interested in their day's 
work — this is fundamental. It is a twentieth-century problem, and 
history gives us no clue to the solution. — David Harold Colcord, "Slaves 
of the Machine," The Review, January 3, 1920, pp. 9-1 1. 

A British Expert's Opinion 

The disputes which matter are not caused by a misunderstanding 
of identity of interests, but by a better understanding of diversity of 
interests. Though a formal declaration of war is an episode, the con- 
ditions which issue in a declaration of war are permanent; and what 
makes them permanent is the conception of industry which also makes 
inequality and functionless incomes permanent. It is the denial that 
industry has any end or purpose other than the satisfaction of those 
engaged in it. That motive produces industrial warfare, not as a re- 
grettable incident, but as an inevitable result. It produces industrial 
war, because its teaching is that each individual or group has a right to 
what they can get, and denies that there is any principle, other than the 
mechanism of the market, which determines what they ought to get. 
For, since the income available for distribution is limited, and since, 
therefore, when certain limits have been passed, what one group gains 
another group must lose, it is evident that if the relative incomes of dif- 
ferent groups are not to be determined by their functions, there is no 
method other than mutual self-assertion which is left to determine them. 
— R. H. Tawney, "The Sickness of an Acquisitive Society," pp. 22, 23. 

II. What Methods Do Employers and Workers Now Use and How 
Far Are They Justifiable f 

Both Sides Censured 

There has been an abundance of testimony to prove to our satis- 
faction that some employers have resorted to questionable methods to 
prevent their workers from organizing in their own interests; that they 
have attempted to defeat democracy by more or less successfully con- 
trolling courts and legislatures ; that some of them have exploited women 



42 CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WORK AND WEALTH 

and children and unorganized workers; that some have resorted to all 
sorts of methods to prevent the enactment of remedial industrial legisla- 
tion ; that some have employed gunmen in strikes who were disreputable 
characters and who assaulted innocent people and committed other crimes 
most reprehensible in character; . . . that some have attempted 
through the authorities to suppress free speech and the right of law- 
ful assembly; and that some have deliberately for selfish ends bribed 
representatives of labor. . . . Unionists also cannot come into 
court with clean hands ; we find saints and sinners, many of them, on 
both sides. — Employers' Group, Canadian Royal Commission on Indus- 
trial Relations. 

The Use of Violence by Strikers 

There was unquestionably some violence on the strikers' part. The 
city marshal kept an exhibit of stones and brick-bats and other muni- 
tions of industrial war, which, while it served to excuse a repressive 
policy on the part of the police, was really significant for its smallness. 
On several occasions groups of them clashed with the police, notably in 
the case of their efifort to cross the commons in a body. The Com- 
missioner of Public Safety who, under the commission form of govern- 
ment, is responsible for police administration, took the position that no 
parade or other public demonstration should be allowed, because the 
situation called for a temporary abridgement of such privileges. It 
was a war maneuver and it was virtually a "war psychology" that pre- 
vailed. . . . The situation was exactly similar to that faced by 
an army fighting against odds, whose chief requirement is the main- 
tenance of morale. Any yielding of their rights as citizens was mani- 
festly a weakening of their cause. As defections from their ranks in- 
creased, the strikers became more insistent on the freedom of the streets, 
more reckless in picketing, and more offensive in intimidation. Things 
were done in retaliation and intimidation that the strike committee could 
not prevent. There were, for example, a number of fires of suspicious 
origin. — Report on the Strike in the Textile Mills of Lawrence, Massa- 
chusetts, February-June, 1919, Commission on the Church and Social 
Service. 

We cannot close our eyes to the fact that in some sections repre- 
sentatives of local trades unions have advocated extreme measures. 
The selection of such men and the advocacy of these measures, we were 
led to believe, was the logical outcome made by both employer and em- 
ployee of unjustifiable opposition by some employers. The adoption 
of the principle of the sympathetic strike has arisen from the refusal 
of groups of employers to grant the claim of the organized workers. 
These factors have been assigned as the chief causes of the non-observ- 



PARTIES TO INDUSTRY— THEIR RIGHTS? 43 

ance of contracts entered into by the workers in numerous cases, es- 
pecially in western Canada. This policy is not recognized by the inter- 
national trades unions who believe in the due observance of agreements 
entered into by themselves or on their behalf. — Report of the Canadian 
Royal Commission on Industrial Relations, p. 11. 

Some Conflicting Opinions on the Strike 

For it is the fatal defect of the method of progress by means of the 
strike . . . that it is indiscriminate in its operation. Might takes 
the place of right, and the most flagrant inequity can be enforced by the 
same means as the most reasonable equity. Moreover it is a method 
open only to the comparatively small section of the community that are 
capable, in view of their occupation, of high organization. It tends thus 
to benefit the few at the cost of the many, and to impose the will of the 
minority upon the majority. — F. J. C. Hearnshaw, "Strikes : Their 
Ethical Aspect," London Quarterly Review, Oct., 1919, p. 248. 

From the point of view of morality, every strike is right, every 
strike is justifiable. The only question to be considered about any 
strike is the question of expediency. Is this particular strike likely to 
help or to hinder the workers in their efiforts to escape from the system 
of industry for private profit ? — Upton Sinclair in The World Tomorrow, 
June, 1920, p. 176. 

The labor situation is critical and we must act; we must invent 
and apply new and unheard-of remedies, if necessary, to a phase in indus- 
try fast becoming crucial ; my only plea is that in acting we choose our 
method and test it carefully as we do our ends. Even if at the moment 
no guaranteed method suggests itself, it is better to avoid one known 
to be evil ; and an inventive and inquiring spirit cannot long fail to 
find a solution. . . . We believe that the difficulty of pointing to 
an immediate and obviously practical method of securing a given end does 
not justify us in approving a method which is in itself morally indefens- 
ible. — Henry J. Cadbury, "The Strike," The World Tomorrow, May, 
1920, p. 132. 

The strike is a form of coercion. So is all organization and all 
government known to man. . . . All property and especially all 
rent and interest depend on coercion often in its very worst forms. Any- 
one who can see the moral evils involved in the strike must be equally 
honest in seeing the far worse evils involved in a capitalistic society; 
and if he would deny the moral right of the one he must deny himself 
the right to use the courts or to hold private property under capitalism. 
— Evan Thomas in The World Tomorrow, June, 1920, p. 177. 



44 CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WORK AND WEALTH 

A Hopeful View of the Labor Movement 

The workers of this country are devoting a great deal of thought 
to the study of economic questions. This educational process is apparently 
going on amongst them to a greater extent than amongst the employers 
of labor. Some of the literature read may not be sound, and the mental 
training of some of the workers may not be of a nature to enable them 
to understand it thoroughly, yet we are convinced that the good sense 
and sound judgment of the majority of the workers enable them to dis- 
criminate between what is sound and what is unsound. For this reason, 
extreme doctrines have not been accepted by any but a minority of the 
working people. Though the advocacy of extreme views both by speech 
and by the distribution of literature may be a contributing cause to occa- 
sional outbursts, the real causes of unrest are of a more fundamental 
nature. — Report of the Canadian Royal Commission. 

How Labor Justifies the Strike 

They [the workers] are not unaware of the waste involved in a pro- 
longed cessation of work or of the sufferings which they inflict upon 
themselves, their families, and the community. But they regard them 
as incidents in a prolonged campaign, and believe that unless the com- 
munity is prepared itself to secure an adequate standard of life for all 
its citizens, then different groups of citizens are justified in endeavoring 
to secure it for themselves, even at the cost of inflicting temporary loss 
upon the community. — "Christianity and Industrial Problems," p. 71. 

A Union That Refused to Strike 

We are, therefore, opposed to the demands for higher wages and 
higher prices. We shall not participate in or support the strike. We shall 
remain at our jobs, prepared to serve the public at our present wages and 
at present prices, believing that in this way we shall perform our pub- 
lic duty as well as serve our own best interests. 

Our position, our wages, and the prices charged in barber shops 
may have no great public importance. But it is of vital importance, if 
the public's campaign against high costs is to be successful, that wage 
earners and employers alike should realize that in this world crisis 
relief will come only through moderation in demands for wages as well 
as for profits — and act accordingly. 

If we are the first labor organization to take this position publicly, 
we are glad and proud to assume the leadership, in the hope that this 
may prove to be the beginning of an effective movement to advance a 
great public cause. — Terminal Barbers Stand by the Public, A'^. Y. Times, 
May 18, 1920. 



PARTIES TO INDUSTRY— THEIR RIGHTS? 45 

III. Is the Closed Shop Principle Justified f 

Declarations o£ Great Employers 

The open shop presupposes the principle of Americanism. It per- 
mits every man to work where he pleases and for what compensation 
he may elect. It represents the principle of individual liberty, the only 
incentive to initiative. It makes possible individual reward. It elimi- 
nates that oppressing influence which rates all workers according to the 
lowest, and stamps upon them the seal of mediocrity. The closed shop, 
on the other hand, represents an un-American autocracy and a confisca- 
tion of liberty and of property rights. If the closed shop should super- 
vene in this country, the present cost of living would within four years 
seem low by comparison, and the domestic as well as the foreign trade 
of the United States, which we now seem to hold securely, would 
inevitably fall into other hands. The closed shop means death to com- 
merce. There can be no misunderstanding of that effect and anyone 
having a primary knowledge of sound economics will accept it with- 
out question. Two years ago the open shop v/as a local issue ; today it 
is a national principle. — William H. Barr, in Railway Review, November 
22, 1919, p. 771. 

We do not combat labor unions as such. We do not negotiate with 
labor unions because it would indicate the closing of our shops against 
non-union labor; and large numbers of our workmen are not members of 
unions and do not care to be. 

The principle of the open shop is vital to the greatest industrial 
progress and prosperity. It is of equal benefit to employer and employe. 
This country will not stand for the closed shop. It cannot 
afford it. In the light of experience we know it would signify decreased 
production, increased cost of living, and initiative, development, and 
enterprise dwarfed. It would be the beginning of industrial decay, and 
an injustice to the workmen themselves who prosper only when industry 
succeeds. The open shop will generally be approved by them, for this 
permits them to engage in any employment, whether they are or are not 
members of a labor union. — Judge Elbert H. Gary, in the Open Shop 
Review, Oct., 1919, pp. 94, 95. 

"Preferential Shop'* 

The "closed shop" issue which is responsible for so much industrial 
warfare has been eliminated in some of the needle industries by the 
device of the "preferential shop." The issue has its cause in the diffi- 
culty of the unions in maintaining their membership and collecting 
money from members. The unions use their power over the employer to 
force him to maintain the strength of their organization by penalizing 



46 CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WORK AND WEALTH 

persons who are disinclined to submit to the rule of the union officials. 
The conscientious employer has moral scruples against forcing his em- 
ployes to be members of a union against their will and to submit to the 
authority of union officials. 

The preferential shop idea is a compromise by which the greatest 
dangers and injustices of compulsory union membership are avoided 
and yet by which there is a distinct advantage to members of the 
union. Union members have preference when new people are needed 
and, when the force must be reduced, they are retained in preference to 
others. — Earl Dean Howard, "The Development of Government in 
Industry," Illinois Law Review, March, 1916. 

Labor's Offer to Surrender "Closed Shop" Principle 

Mr. H. B. Endicott, a member of the "public group" of the Presi- 
dent's First Industrial Conference, stated concerning the resolution 
brought in by a member of his group, declaring the right of organization : 
"It seemed to me that there was danger that this statement might be con- 
strued as urging workmen to join the union. Accordingly I suggested 
that there be added the following: 

'This must not be understood as limiting the right of any wage 
earner to refrain from joining any organization or to deal directly 
with his employer if he so chooses.' 

"The public group agreed that this seemed a safe proposition ; the 
labor group, after quite a conference among themselves agreed to accept 
the same, although they realized that the last paragraph was not to their 
liking. The majority of the employers' group, after long consultation, 
decided against it." — A^. Y. Times, October 26, 1919. 

IV. What Attitude Should the Public Take toward Conflicts 
between Labor and Capital? 

Governor Allen Counsels Coercion 

Governor Allen said that labor leaders in Kansas contended that 
in forbidding the strike the State had taken away labor's best weapon. 
He contended that it had given labor in every honorable controversy the 
more reliable weapon of the State Government. . . . The Kansas 
law does not do away with collective bargaining. It gives the miners 
the right, organized or unorganized, and it protects the sanctity of their 
contract. ... "I believe that the day is coming, my friends, when 
the doctrine we presented in Kansas will come to be accepted as the broad 
and just and impartial remedy for the compulsion of unionism. I would 
not seek to wipe out unionism, I would seek to place it under less radical 
direction."— iV. Y. Times, May 29, 1920. 



PARTIES TO INDUSTRY— THEIR RIGHTS? 47 

Mr. Hoover Objects 

Generally, it should be clearly understood that compulsory settle- 
ment of employment at best only assures continuity of production through 
just wages, hours, and profits. It does not approach the problem from 
the point of view of upbuilding a relation in industry that will, if suc- 
cessful, not only eliminate strikes and lockouts, but make constructively 
for greater production and cheaper costs. To me there is no question that 
we should try the experiment of the perhaps longer road proposed by the 
Industrial Conference for the development of relationships between 
employer and employe, rather than to enter upon summary action of 
court decision that may both stifle the delicate adjustment of indus- 
trial processes and cause serious conflict over human rights. We must 
all agree that those solutions of deficiencies in our social, economic, and 
political structure which are found through education and voluntary 
action of our people themselves are the solutions that endure. To me, the 
upbuilding of the sense of responsibility and of intelligence in each in- 
dividual unit in the United States, with the intervention of government 
only to promote the development of these relations, the suppress'ion of 
domination by any one group over another, is the basis upon which 
democracy must progress. The Industrial Relations Law of Kansas has 
taken from the workers their ownership of themselves. They must work 
by order of the court, under penalty of fine and imprisonment, and the 
Government stands behind such a law compelling them to work. A slave 
must work when his master directs, he cannot refuse. The freeman may 
refuse to work, may own himself. — Herbert Hoover in National Labor 
Digest, May, 1920, p. 13. 

Drastic Action Demanded 

I hope that this association (American Bar Association) will try 
soon to frame a law to make strikes a criminal offense. These men who 
control the labor organization threaten us with calamities hardly second 
to those which happened through the acts of Germany. We could not 
afford to have a few Germans overrun the world, nor can we have in 
this country a few men not chosen to high office threatening the entire 
community. — Moorfield Storey, quoted in Industry, Sept. i, 1919, p. 4. 

The Canadian Law 

Under the law [of Canada], which was enacted in 1907, it is illegal 
to declare a strike or lockout in mines or other public utilities until a full 
investigation into the merits of the dispute has been completed. Thirty 
days' notice must be given of any intention on the part of either employer 
or workers to secure a change in wages or working conditions. If at 
the end of this period no agreement has been reached, application must 



48 CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WORK AND WEALTH 

be made for a board of investigation and conciliation. The Minister of 
Labor then arranges for the creation of such a board, one member of 
which is nominated by the employers, one by the employes, and a third 
by joint recommendation of the other two members. 

This board considers the facts of the case in dispute and makes 
its report to the Minister of Labor. After that employers and employes 
are free to accept or reject the recommendations and to resort to strike 
or lockout. . . . Professor Adam Shortt was chairman of eleven 
boards in the first two years after the act was passed. In every one of 
these disputes a settlement was effected and he has the reputation of 
having been the most successful chairman appointed under the act. In 
his opinion, the clauses which restrain the men from striking pending 
investigation are practically unnecessary. — W. L. Mackenzie King, "In- 
dustrial Disputes and the Canadian Act," pp. 3, 27. 



CHAPTER VII 
FOR WHOM SHOULD INDUSTRY BE RUN? 

1. According to present practice for whom is industry run? 

2. What has each of the parties to industry at stake? 

3. In what ways do the interests of the parties to industry con- 
flict? 

4. Where is the truth in the following? 

Capital may say : "I have put in the money and taken the 
risks; I should get the profits," 

Labor may say: "I create all wealth, therefore I should 
have the profits." 

The public may say : "We make industry possible, we have 
a right to determine production, wages, and profits in our own 
interests." 

5. What are the considerations for and against industry being 
run for private profit ? 

6. What obligation is there to serve the community through 
the conduct of an industry? What share of this obligation rests 
upon labor ? 

7. Which would Christ regard as the more Christian — doing a 
piece of special church work or carrying on the ordinary business 
of life so as to express the law of service? 

8. What changes, if any, are needed in the present system to 
enable an industry to meet the Christian demand? 

CURRENT OPINIONS ON THE QUESTIONS AT ISSUE 

I. In Common Practice, for Whom Is Industry Now Run? 

Michigan Court Upholds the Prior Rights of Stockholders 

Directors are chosen from among the large stockholders, on the 
theory that a heavy holding is a guarantee of faithfulness to their 
property trust. This theory of what a director is for is admirably illus- 

49 



50 CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WORK AND WEALTH 

trated by the action of the Michigan Supreme Court, in condemning 
the directors of the Ford Company for decreeing that all the earnings 
beyond five per cent a month should be reinvested in the business, with 
the avowed intent of employing more labor and thus achieving a social 
end. The court upheld the protest of aggrieved stockholders, giving its 
judgment that "a business corporation is organized for the profit of the 
stockholders, and the discretion of the directors . . . does not 
extend to the reduction of profits in order to benefit the public, making 
the profits incident thereto." — F. Ernest Johnson, "The New Spirit in 
Industry," pp. 17, 18. 

The Public Concerned Chiefly with Production 

The chief interest of the public is in obtaining the service or the 
commodity, not in the terms or conditions under which it is forthcoming. 
That these conditions, especially for the work-people, should be such as 
conduce to the health and comfort and prosperity of those who serve it 
and produce for it is certainly a matter of high concern to it, but not 
its chief concern. — N. P. Oilman, "Methods of Industrial Peace," p. 281. 

Mr. Rockefeller Puts Service Motive Forward 

The day has passed when the conception of industry as chiefly a 
revenue-producing process can be maintained. To cling to such a concep- 
tion is only to arouse antagonisms and to court trouble. In the light 
of the present, every thoughtful man must concede that the purpose of 
industry is quite as much the advancement of social well-being as the 
accumulation of wealth. — John D. Rockefeller, Jr., in Annals of the 
American Academy of Political and Social Science, January, 1919, 
p. 168. 

Place of Labor in an Industrial System 

But there is a fundamental difference between the worker of today 
and that of the days of the handicrafts. The worker today is only part 
of a comprehensive mechanical process, the purpose and methods of 
which set metes and bounds to his actions. No act of his, however in- 
telligent, must find its place in this predetermined scheme. The 
individual manipulator of a machine in a great shoe factory is at the 
mercy of the general process of which he and his particular machine are 
merely parts. The general process actually standardizes and delimits 
his thought. His ideas must fall within the fixed mechanical units of 
grade, weight, size, demanded by the machine process. — John M. Meck- 
lin, "An Introduction to Social Ethics," p. 351. 

We think that the common description of workers as "hands" sum- 



FOR WHOM SHOULD INDUSTRY BE RUN? 51 

marizes aptly an aspect of their economic position which is not the less 
degrading because it has hitherto met with too general acquiescence. 
The suggestion is that the worker is an accessory to industry rather 
than a partner in it; that his physical strength and manual dexterity 
are required to perform its operations, but that he neither has a mind 
which requires to be consulted as to its policy nor a personality which 
demands consideration; that he is a hired servant whose duty ends with 
implicit obedience, not a citizen of industry whose virtue is in initiative 
and intelligence. — "Christianity and Industrial Problems," p. 54. 

The Peace Treaty 

The first clause of the Labour Declaration in the Peace Treaty 
states that "labour should not be regarded merely as a commodity or 
as an article of commerce." That we believe to be the basic principle 
on which the dealings between the employer and the employee should 
be established ; and if it is freely and frankly acknowledged by employers, 
and acted upon in good faith, we believe it will go a long way to im- 
prove the relations between them. — Report of the Canadian Royal Com- 
mission on Industrial Relations, p. 9. 

Service Buys Success 

A few of the great leaders of industry have understood in a general 
way this kind of finance based on service. Among them may be mentioned 
Mr. Andrew Carnegie, who said he valued his organization more than 
his plants, and who, through an understanding of this general principle, 
was able to dominate the steel industry ; and Mr. Ford, who, by the same 
token, became the greatest automobile manufacturer in the world. The 
war has backed up Mr. Carnegie and Mr. Ford by proving that productive 
capacity is enormously more important than wealth. — H. L. Gantt, "Or- 
ganizing for Work," pp. 54, 55. 

11. What Stake in Industry Has Each of the Parties to Production? 

The Responsibility o£ Corporation Directors 

A director in a Lawrence mill told me that he could not, even by 
weekly visits to the mill, acquire information that would put him in a 
position to have an original voice in the determination of policy. In 
the presence of those whose statements about vital facts one is not in 
position to question, he instinctively subsides. To be sure, a director 
finding himself in this position can resign. It may help him out, per- 
sonally, but from the point of view of redeeming the industry the proposal 
that a conscientious director make place for one of less sensitive fiber 
is not particularly helpful. . . . Here, then, are three types of rela- 



52 CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WORK AND WEALTH 

tionship borne by the director to the industry: he represents his own 
interests, those of his clients, and, in general, the stockholders who elected 
him. Some of his clients tell him that they are not getting a "living 
dividend." A modern corporation may be composed of millionaires and 
dependent poor. The honest director is often in a bad way. — F. Ernest 
Johnson, "The New Spirit in Industry," p. 17. 

Profit the Prime Concern of Employer 

Adam Smith's famous dictum, "The consideration of his own private 
profit is the sole motive which determines the owner of any capital," 
is still the theory of business enterprise. Whatever the variations due 
to the temper or training of the individual business man it still remains 
true that, as a rule, the effect his activity may have upon social welfare, 
as Smith says, "never enters his thoughts." — John M. Mecklin, "An 
Introduction to Social Ethics," p. 381. 

Conflicting and Common Interests of Capital and Labor 

Anyone who today speaks of the "essential identity of interest be- 
tween capital and labor" is convicted thereby of either simplicity or 
hypocrisy. . . . How can there be identity of interest between two 
parties one of which seeks to diminish what the other seeks to augment, 
to one of which accrues all of the joint product that it can withhold 
from the other? . . . Capital ... is a passivity, not a productive 
function. Capital may be owned by an infant or an idiot or an estate or 
any other anonymity. The change of ownership would make no differ- 
ence to the productive process of such. . . . But as between capi- 
talist and worker the case is far more difficult and baffling. Even if 
we assume that both capitalist and worker are essential to production 
does it follow that the common interest in production suffices as a ground 
of agreement? — R. M. Maclver, "Labor in the Changing World," pp. 
28-32 

It is idle wholly to deny the existence of conflicting interests between 
employers and employes. But there are wide areas of activity in which 
their interests coincide. It is the part of statesmanship to organize 
identity of interest where it exists, in order to reduce the area of con- 
flict. The representative principle is needed to make effective the em- 
ploye's interest in production, as well as in wages and working con- 
ditions. It is likewise needed to make more effective the employer's 
interest in the human element of industry. — Report of President's Indus- 
trial Conference, p. 10. 

I believe that the ultimate object of all activities in a republic should 
be the development of the manhood of its citizens; that such manhood 
can be developed to the fullest degree only under conditions of freedom 



FOR WHOM SHOULD INDUSTRY BE RUN? 53 

for the individual, and that industrial enterprises can and should be con- 
ducted in accordance with these principles. I believe that a corporation 
should be deemed to consist of its stockholders, directors, officers, and 
employes ; that the real interests of all are one, and that neither labor nor 
capital can permanently prosper until the just rights of both are con- 
served. — Statement of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., before the U. S. Com- 
mission on Industrial Relations, Jan. 25, 1915. 

The Stake of the Community Fundamental 

It is the community which provides the natural resources and powers 
that underlie all production. Individuals may acquire title by one means 
or another, but it is from the community, and with the consent of the 
community, that titles are held. It is the community, organized in vari- 
ous ways, which maintains government and foreign relations, secures 
law and order, fosters the arts and inventions, aids education, breeds 
opinion, and promotes, through concession or otherwise, the agencies of 
transportation, communication, credit, banking, and the like, without 
which any production, save the most primitive, would be impossible. 
It is the community which creates the demand for commodities and 
services, through which labor is provided with remunerative employ- 
ment, and capital with a return upon its investment. Apart from 
the community, inventive genius, organizing capacity, managerial or 
other ability would be of little value. Turn where one may, it is 
the community that makes possible all the activities of Industry, and 
helps to determine their value and scope. — W. L. Mackenzie King, 
"Industry and Humanity," pp. 135, 136. 

The community needs service first, regardless of who gets the profits, 
because its life depends upon the service it gets. — H. L. Gantt, "Organ- 
izing for Work," p. 5. 

The Changing Status o£ Labor 

We commonly take it as decided that the status of the manual 
worker has to be changed. Two thousand years ago he was normally 
a slave. A thousand years ago he was generally a serf. A hundred years 
ago he was typically a mere servant, from whom, in his working hours, 
nothing was tolerated or expected beyond implicit obedience to orders 
from a capitalist superior. Today, it is clear, his status has been changed, 
and is to be increasingly changed. So much is commonly admitted. — 
The New Statesman, Oct. 18, 1919, pp. 53, 54. 

Sharing the Profits 

Notwithstanding, some employers who are using profit sharing plans 
report highly satisfactory results, . . . Many of the concerns report that 



54 CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WORK AND WEALTH 

they appropriate lo per cent of the net annual earnings for distribution, 
while there are some cases where as high as 50 per cent of the net 
profits of the business is distributed among the workers. The employee 
usually shares in the profits in proportion to his wages and the length 
of time he has been in the employ of the company. — "Experiences in 
Profit Sharing," National Labor Digest, July, 1920, p. 29. 

The Human Element in Industry 

The only way that improvement can be brought about, however, 
is by an appreciation on the part of employers of the workmen's 
problems and point of view and a human sympathy not for them, but 
toward them. This will help gradually to accomplish much more than 
will be accomplished by antagonistic complaints, even though it sometimes 
does try one's patience to find any basis of sympathy with the viewpoint 
or methods of the usual type of union leaders. — J. Harvey Williams, in 
the Manufacturers' Record, Apr. 15, 1920, p. 104. 

Democracy is not mere politeness, though common courtesy is not 
without its value. If the worker comes into the office with a complaint 
and is told, as he not infrequently is, to "get to hell out of here," he is 
not likely to develop that good will which must certainly be one element 
in democracy. Nor is democracy noblesse oblige, an ideal which functions 
only in a society dominated by a master-and-servant ethics. Nor again 
is democracy the right of self-making men, worshiping their makers, 
to trample on one another climbing up the ladder of dollar success. 
Finally, democracy is not merely political organization and equal voting. 
Nor is it majority, still less minority, rule. A minority rule is sure to 
be the camouflaged domination of special privilege. Majority rule may 
be frankly tyrannous. 

, Democracy, in other words, is the real recognition of each 
individual as an end, and an economy in which human powers and capaci- 
ties for achievement, service, and happiness are symmetrically developed 
wherever found, without deference to race, sex, language, birth, or 
nationality. As a philosophy of means democracy is equity of oppor- 
tunity and the cooperative use of human and natural resources to a worthy 
life for individuals. — A. B. Wolfe in Publications of the American Socio- 
logical Society, Vol. XIV, pp. 74, 75. 

HI. What Should Be the Purpose of Industry? 

Business as a Service Profession 

Business is taking on the character of a profession. Five great 
intellectual professions relating to the daily necessities of life have hith- 
erto existed: the soldier's profession is to defend it; the pastor's to 



FOR WHOM SHOULD INDUSTRY BE RUN? 55 

teach it; the physician's to keep it in health; the lawyer's to inforce jus- 
tice in it; the merchant's to provide for it. The duty of all these men 
is on due occasion to die for it. On due occasion namely the soldier, 
rather than leave his post in battle; the physician rather than leave his 
post in a plague; the pastor rather than teach falsehood; the lawyer 
rather than countenance injustice; the merchant — What is his "due occa- 
sion" of death? It is the main question for the merchant as for all of us. 
For the man who does not know when to die does not know how to live. — 
John Ruskin, "The Roots of Honor." 

. . . Statesmanship in business has come to be adjudged worthier 
of a real man's mettle than philanthropy outside business. A business 
man's public service is seen to consist not so much in a number of bene- 
volent chores taken on after office hours as in the way the business of 
the world is carried on during office hours. — Glenn Frank, "The Poli- 
tics of Industry," p. 50. 

The Social Obligation of Industry 

It makes it peculiarly important to insist that industry is before all 
things a social function, and that those engaged in it ought not to seek 
their own advantage at the expense of the community by unduly limiting 
the output, raising the prices, or deteriorating the quality of the services 
which they offer. — "Christianity and Industrial Problems," p. 59. 

A Cooperative Effort for Industrial Peace 

Class rule, whether in an autocracy, a monarchy or a republic, is 
always and everywhere fatal to brotherhood and peace. The material re- 
lations that men and nations bear each other determine largely their social 
and ethical relations. If their material relations are mutual they will be 
friends; if antagonistic they will be enemies. The capitalist class and the 
working class can never be friends and brotherhood and peace can 
never be realized until the war between them is ended by the abolition of 
class rule and the establishment of the cooperative commonwealth. — 
Eugene V. Debs, in New York Call, June 15, 1920. 



CHAPTER VIII 

WHAT SHARE SHOULD LABOR HAVE IN THE 
MANAGEMENT OF INDUSTRY? 

1. Has an employer a right to "run his own business" without the 
participation of those he employs? Why, or why not? 

2. What share in management does the worker want? Should 
he have it ? Why, or why not ? 

3. If some method of joint management is considered advisable, 
what is the comparative merit of the following? 

a. Collective bargaining and trade agreements. 

b. Works' committees, industrial councils, etc. 

c. Arbitration and conciliation. 

4. Will increasing the workers' voice in industry be detrimental 
to the rights of the owner? 

5. What weight should the employer give to industrial efficiency 
in deciding his labor policy? 

6. Should the public be represented in industrial management? 
If so, how? If not, why not? 

7. Is participation by the workers in the management likely to 
lessen industrial efficiency? Why do you hold your opinion? If 
it should, would human considerations still make it desirable ? 

8. What should be the determining factor in deciding who should 
manage industry ? 

CURRENT OPINIONS ON THE QUESTIONS AT ISSUE 

I. How Much Voice Do the Workers Want in Industrial Manage- 
ment? 

Testimony of Eminent Employers 

Cyrus McCormick, Jr., is quoted as saying lately: 
"What the workingman is asking for, and what we are trying to give 
him, is a voice in the control of the business in which he is a co-partner. 

56 



WHAT SHARE FOR LABOR IN MANAGEMENT? 57 

This demand has taken on various forms in different places. In Russia 
and elsewhere on the European continent it is known as Bolshevism; 
in England they call it the Whitley plan ; elsewhere it may be called 
employes' representation, and somewhere else co-partnership. Under 
all of these, however, it is the basic fact that the relationships between 
employer and employe must be founded on something else than a cash 
bond. . . . With every one of our hitherto most guarded ledgers 
open to these men, we believe that they would see the facts as clearly as 
we saw them." — The Dial, July 12, 1919, p. 8. 

I believe that the greatest task to which American employers 
must address themselves is the devising of practical ways in which 
labor can be given the full recognition to which, as an equal partner, 
it is entitled. I make this statement with absolute confidence in the 
fairmindedness of the American workingman, when he is fully informed 
and is entirely free to act. If I did not have this confidence, I should 
despair of the future of our free institutions. I believe that one of the 
first steps necessary to inspire the workmen with confidence in the 
sincerity of the employers' recognition of the proper status of labor, 
is the adoption of a fair system of collective bargaining. — William B. 
Dickson, Vice-President, Midvale Steel and Ordnance Company, in 
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Sep- 
tember, 1919, p. 24. 

The question which now confronts the student of industrial prob- 
lems is how to reestablish personal relations and cooperation in spite of 
changed conditions. The answer is not doubtful or questionable, but 
absolutely clear and unmistakable. It is, through adequate representa- 
tion of the four parties in the councils of industry. — John D. Rockefeller, 
Jr., in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 
January, 1919, p. 171, 

Too Little Attention to Labor Policy 

In the past it has been customary for the chief executives to deal 
only with the production, finance, and sales problems. Labor was left 
as an incidental matter for production superintendents and foremen to 
handle. Only when labor difficulties arose was labor considered im- 
portant enough for the directors to handle and at such times subordinate 
officers had already committed the company to a policy that the directors 
were bound to uphold. Only by determining the labor policies in the 
board of directors' meetings, where they can be considered in conjunction 
with production, finance, and sales policies, can a proper system of 
labor relations be devised and kept in constant operation. — Wm, M. 
Leiserson, in Monthly Labor Review, October, 19 19, p. 208, 



58 CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WORK AND WEALTH 

An Elemental Right Denied 

Above all, his (the worker's) representatives cannot enter the 
council chamber where policy is determined. Yet that policy concerns 
him vitally, for on it may depend his standard of living, his chance of 
employment, his safety from or subjection to that excessive driving which 
wears out life. — R. M. Maclver, "Labor in the Changing World," p. 53. 

In these days when the condition throughout the world is what it is, 
any man or group of men, who are unwilling to enter into conference 
for the sake of avoiding strife — I do not care who the party or parties 
may be — any man who is unwilling to enter into conference for the sake 
of helping to make a position rightfully understood is a public menace 
and should receive no consideration from society. I say that equally of 
any leader of labor or any captain of industry. The greater the man 
the greater the offense. Conference does not necessarily mean meeting 
all demands, or obtaining all demands, but it does afford opportunity for 
the statement of a position, and of giving to the public, the fourth party 
to industry, an intelligent appreciation of what is fundamental in dift'er- 
ences between contending parties. — W. L. Mackenzie King, in Report 
of National Industrial Conference of Canada, p. 16. 

Employes Intimidated 

A highly paid employe of the corporation refused even to see me. 
I had been at his house, and finding that he was out, I left word that I would 
return at a specified hour. Returning at the time named, my ring 
brought the housewife to the door, who told me that her husband was 
at home, but that he would not see me or talk to me because the com- 
pany had forbidden its employes to talk with strangers about mill work. 
Repeatedly I interviewed men who answered my questions guardedly, 
evidently in great perturbation of spirit, as if they feared that my visit 
boded them no good. . . . One man, of long experience as a steel 
worker, who gave me a better insight into mill conditions than any other 
one person, remarked: "I used to write for labor papers a great deal, 
and sometimes I fairly burn to do it now — to declare before the world 
over my own signature, the facts about working conditions in the steel 
industry. But I can't. It wouldn't be safe." — John A. Fitch, "The Steel 
Workers," p. 215. 

The Workers Thought Indifferent to Joint Management Plans 

I know of no case in which the workers have asked for or initiated 
any form of industrial representation, or have received the representation 
other than with suspicion. Workers do not yearn for democracy; they 
commonly know nothing whatsoever of the processes of industry and 



WHAT SHARE FOR LABOR IN MANAGEMENT? 59 

always they will more readily receive an untruth than a truth. There 
is nothing strange about this. They have been firmly grounded in the 
notion that the employer v/ill cheat them if he can, in which view they 
are more often right than wrong. It is a remarkable tribute to the funda- 
mental fairness of the average man, to the fundamental fairness of the 
American worker, that he receives every clearcut plan for industrial 
representation with far better grace than the employer would have re- 
ceived such suggestion. — Samuel Crowther, in World's Work, December, 
1919, pp. 191, 192. 

The Limits of Democratic Control 

Democratic control, in the present stage at any rate, does not in- 
volve a demand for control over what may be called the "commercial 
side of management," the buying of raw material, the selling of the fin- 
ished article, and all the exercise of trained judgment and experience 
that are brought to bear by business men on these questions. It is a 
demand for control over the conditions under which their own daily work 
is done. — A. E. Zimmern, "Nationality and Government." 

"Participation" Considered Inimical to Labor*s Rights 

My immediate advice to labor would be to stick to its strict rights of 
combining and striking; and certainly not to sell them for any plausible 
and partial "participation" in management. I distrust the latter because 
it is in line with the whole oligarchic strategy by which democracy has 
been defeated in detail. The triumph of capitalism has practically con- 
sisted in granting popular control in such small quantities that the con- 
trol would be controlled. It is also founded on the fact that a man who 
can be trusted as speaking for the employes often cannot be trusted for 
long when speaking with the employers. — G. K. Chesterton, quoted by 
Glenn Frank, "The Politics of Industry," pp. 143, 144. 

What Participation Means 

Representative negotiation is defined as that form of collective bar- 
gaining which provides for negotiation between an employer and duly 
accredited representatives of his employes, regarding hours, wages, 
and all other matters properly affecting their relationship. Employes' 
representatives should be duly accredited, should be chosen by the em- 
ployes from among their own number, unless otherwise agreed by 
employer and employe, and be empowered by the employes to negotiate 
for them. Such negotiation should be under the control of the parties 
immediately concerned, and should they fail to reach an agreement the 
employer and the group of employes' representatives should each have the 
option of choosing, without restriction by the other party, a reputable and 



6o CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WORK AND WEALTH 

competent adviser or advocate to meet with them in the continued nego- 
tiations. Representatives of employes, selected by and from among their 
own number, should be assured by their employer that no discrimination 
will be made against them because of anything said or done in their 
representative capacity. 

In those industries where it is impracticable owing to the nature of 
the enterprise for a single employer to negotiate with his employes 
through representative negotiation, but it is practicable for a group of 
employers to negotiate with groups of employes and the law permits, 
it is advised that such group negotiations be conducted in accordance, 
as far as possible, with the plan of representative negotiation above out- 
lined. — Industrial Information Service, June 17, 1920, p. 5. 

In the systems of employe representation which I have been able to 
examine, the still small voice of the General Manager could be heard 
very, very distinctly above the roar of the shop committee whirlwind 
or the crash of the works council earthquake. — Royal Meeker, in Ameri- 
can Economic Review, March, 1920, p. 96. 

Mr. Gompers's Criticism of the President's Conference 

It is to be feared that the commission [the President's Conference] 
views industry from the viewpoint of the single shop and builds its 
machinery on the theory that disputes are to be settled shop by shop. 
If such a viewpoint is to be actually carried into operation it will be most 
disastrous. Unavoidably organization of independent shop units of em- 
ployes is a menace to the workers, for the reason that it organizes them 
away from each other and puts them in a position where shop may be 
played against shop. Not only the welfare of the workers but the best 
economy for the nation demands that industry, in so far as possible, be 
viewed in a national light and that the workers be united into organiza- 
tions covering whole industries, as is now the case with the one hundred 
and twenty national and international trade unions. — Samuel Gompers, 
in National Labor Digest, May, 1920, p. 25. 

II. Is Participation by the Workers in Management Likely to 
Lessen Industrial Efficiency? 

The Experience of American Employers 

One very definite advantage of works committees which seems to 
be reported without exception is that representatives take back to the em- 
ployes from the meetings a more adequate appreciation of the problems 
of the management, and that this, together with the increased compre- 
hension by the executives of the problems, desires, and ambitions of their 
workers, results in a much better understanding on both sides. 



WHAT SHARE FOR LABOR IN MANAGEMENT? 6i 

One company reports that during the first few months after the 
establishment of its works committee system, production was increased 
about twenty per cent and expenses advanced less than five per cent. 
. The White Motor Company claims that the works committee 
was responsible for considerable reduction in turnover and absentee- 
ism. The American Multigraph Company ascribes to its plan of repre- 
sentation a great reduction in the amount of tardiness. The Leeds and 
Northrup Company has observed a marked decrease in the amount of time 
wasted by workers since the shop committee was established. The same 
company reports that its works committee appointed a special subcom- 
mittee on housekeeping which conducted clean-up campaigns which 
greatly improved conditions of the plant. — E. B. Tolsted, in Industrial 
Management, Nov., 1919, p. 411. 

An Answer to a Question 

Can you give an example of how any move suggested by the em- 
ployes has reacted to the benefit of the firm? 

Yes; take the question of hours of employment. We were working 
53 hours a week. At one of the meetings of the lower house, it was 
suggested that the working hours could be reduced to 50 without a loss 
of production and with a certain saving in overhead. The subject was 
argued from every possible angle. Finally, all three bodies came to the 
conclusion they would try it out. If the experirrtent resulted in any loss 
of production, the workers agreed to go back to the 53-hour week. 
Everyone pledged himself to a full, honest 50-hour service, promising to 
avoid tardiness and idle machinery. Before the trial period was over, 
the production was increased by about 8 per cent, which meant better 
income and saving for all concerned. A few months ago the Cabinet sug- 
gested to the men that as long as the first change of hours worked out so 
successfully, the House and Senate should consider the advisability of 
changing to a 48-hour week. After quite some deliberation the new 
schedule was accepted and we are now working 48 hours without having 
decreased the production. — Leopold Demuth, in Factory, September, 1919, 
PP- 503, 504- 

Employer Thinks Workers Wholly Trustworthy 

In the last analysis who is most vitally interested in the success of 
an organization, the man who is dependent on the permanency of his 
position and the possibility it offers for advancement, or the person 
whose only interest is the amount of dividends that can be secured on 
his investment? Does it sound reasonable to suppose that a board of 
directors composed of workers from every department of a corpora- 
tion will be any more apt to make mistakes or act for their purely selfish 
jjiterests than a board of stockholders who lack knowledge of the busi- 



62 CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WORK AND WEALTH 

ness and whose connection with the organization is a strictly financial 
one? — David A. Brown, President, General Necessities Corporation, 
Detroit, in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social 
Science, Sept., 1919, pp. 186, 187. 

Questions the Ability of Workers to Share Responsibility 

The management of industry is increasingly technical in respect 
both to production processes and to business methods. It is perfectly 
evident that the average working man would be as completely lost in 
the office of the Production Engineer as he would be in the General 
Manager's office. For the most part the workers are not only unfit to 
share management to any considerable degree, but they are quite aware 
of this incompetence. They do not want to run the business but they want 
sufficient representation to determine, beyond a doubt, that it is being 
run without detriment to their own interests. — Selected. 

HI. What Is the Comparative Merit of (i) Trade Unions, (2) 
Works Committees, (3) Arbitration and Conciliation? 

Declaration of the President's Industrial Conference 

Many employers . . . object to collective bargaining through 
the trade union, on the ground that its agents are often not truly repre- 
sentative of their employes, that they are often uninformed in regard to 
the technical details of the business involved, and that, instead of feeling 
concern for the success of this business upon which the welfare of the 
employes as well as of the employers vitally depends, they care primarily 
for the success of the unions which they represent. 

On the other hand, employes often object to collective bargaining 
through employe representatives, on the ground that such spokesmen, 
because themselves employes, are too dependent upon the employer, and 
too much under his influence to be good negotiators. 

The Conference is in favor of the policy of collective bargaining. 
It sees in a frank acceptance of this principle the most helpful approach 
to industrial peace. It believes that the great body of the employers 
of the country accept this principle. The Conference believes that the 
difficulties can be overcome and the advantages of collective bargaining 
secured if employers and employes will honestly attempt to substitute 
for an unyielding, contentious attitude, a spirit of cooperation with refer- 
ence to those aspects of the employment relation where their interests 
are not really opposed but mutual. — Report of President's Industrial Con- 
ference, pp. 30, 31. 

Mr. Schwab Objects to Outside Dictation 

J §m not opposed to organized labor. I believe that labor should 



WHAT SHARE FOR LABOR IN MANAGEMENT? 63 

organize in individual plants or amongst themselves for the better nego- 
tiation of labor and the protection of their own rights; but the organi- 
zation and control of labor in individual plants and manufactories, to 
my mind, ought to be made representative of the people in those plants 
who know the conditions ; that they ought not to be controlled by some- 
body from Kamchatka who knows nothing about what their conditions 
are. — Charles M. Schv/ab, in Annals of the American Academy of 
Political and Social Science, January, 1919, p. 158. 

Government Mediator Outlines Rights of Both Sides 

There is no more reason to insist that those whose labor is their 
capital should deal as individuals than that each capitalist should be 
in business by himself. If the people have a right to pool their cash capital 
in a corporation, the laborers have the same right to pool their labor 
capital in a union and deal collectively. 

If an employer does not wish to enter into an agreement with a union, 
that is his privilege, but he certainly cannot justly refuse to enter into an 
agreement on wages and working conditions with a committee repre- 
senting his own employes. In dealing with a recognized union the em- 
ployer has the advantage of knowing the union is protecting him from 
unfair competition as to wages and hours by competing firms, while 
a committee of his own employes can give no such guarantee. If the 
employers and men in industry are thoroughly organized, wages and con- 
ditions can thus be stabilized and the turnover of labor caused by the men 
changing from shop to shop to get better wages can be avoided. — V. 
Everit Macy, in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social 
Science, January, 1919, pp. 82, 83. 

Mutual Responsibility a Necessity 

If individual bargaining has its defects and limitations, so, too, has 
collective bargaining, although they may be of a somewhat different 
kind. Especially if the collective bargain is signed, not by a union or a 
federation of unions, but by a temporary association of workers in a 
trade, as in the case of the Newcastle engineers in 1871, the danger of 
repudiation of the agreement, or disregard of some of its important pro- 
visions, is great, and there is no recourse for the party injured by the 
default. Figures show that strikes are more numerous in those indus- 
tries where collective bargaining is practiced by unorganized workers 
than in those where the trade unions are strong. Beyond a question, then, 
the best machinery for the making and the enforcement of joint agree- 
ments is supplied by an employers' association on one side, that can 
bind its members, and a trade union, local or national, on the other 
side, that can equally hold all its constituents to the terms agreed upon. 



64 CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WORK AND WEALTH 

Not every union or association has been able to do this. But it is much 
to the credit of the great majority of unions in England and America 
that they have generally lived up to the joint agreements which they 
have made ; and the record of the employers' association is equally 
good. — N. P. Gilman, "Methods of Industrial Peace," pp. 121-123. 

An Expert's Testimony 

It [the trade agreement] remains today as the most practicable 
method of measuring justice to the respective parties in industry, Capital 
and Labor; not exact justice, surely, but a measure of justice that fairly 
well fulfills the ideals of an age when exact justice, if not unattainable, 
nevertheless is unattained. 

Conciliation and arbitration, as understood today, presuppose a state 
of war between Capital and Labor. Remove the cause of the conflict 
and industrial peace is sure to follow. It will follow, too, in certain 
ratio to progress in removing basic causes of the conflict. Conciliation 
and arbitration offer no permanent relief. They do not presume to deal 
with industrial problems at their source. They merely temper the harsh- 
ness of contending forces at its outlet. They are palliatives at best and 
frequently impotent palliatives. — Carl H. Mote, "Industrial Arbitration," 
PP- 315. 326. 

Labor's Objection to Coercion 

The objection of labor to the Compulsory Arbitration Act, and also 
to the Canadian one, which requires publicity and notification for thirty 
days, and prohibits a strike or lockout during that time, is that they 
apply unequally to capital and labor; that capital can avoid the con- 
sequences of such a law and its actual restrictions which labor cannot 
do. It cannot call a strike and labor is placed at a disadvantage because 
capital can practically shut down and discharge men. Labor finds itself 
beaten under the enforcement of that act. — Harry F. Ward, "The Labor 
Movement," pp. 25, 26. 

Experience of Other Countries 

It is, however, by no means certain that compulsory arbitration will 
achieve industrial peace. It has not in New Zealand or in New South 
Wales. Because of the political weakness of organized labor in the 
United States, the drafting and the enforcement of compulsory arbi- 
tration laws will doubtless, as a rule, be under the control of persons not 
recognized as friends of organized labor. Under such circumstances it 
may not be anticipated that this legislation will be very distasteful to the 
business interests of the nation. — Frank T. Carlton, in Annals of the 
American Academy of Political and Social Science, January, 1917, 
p. 156. 



WHAT SHARE FOR LABOR IN MANAGEMENT? 65 

It was this experience [the need of power to investigate] which 
made us seek to get from Parliament powers of compulsory investigation, 
which meant to labor, power at the expense of the State, and with the 
machinery of the State back of it, to choose its own investigator, to 
summon witnesses, to compel the production of documents, to take evi- 
dence under oath, and to give to the public the fullest possible kind of 
a view of its case, including any injustices under which it might be 
suffering. . . . As a compulsory investigation act — that is to say, 
investigation of a dispute under compulsion at the request of either of 
the parties, labor or capital — never once during the Liberal administra- 
tion did its provisions in this particular fail, and where investigation took 
place, the results were for the most part not only beneficial to the parties 
but very greatly so to the public as well. — W. L. Mackenzie King, "In- 
dustrial Disputes and the Canadian Act," p. 25. 



CHAPTER IX 

WHAT IS THE CHRISTIAN MOTIVE FOR 
INDUSTRY? 

1. Why has competition been considered the life of trade? 
Does the competitive quest for private profit give the most economi- 
cal use of human energies? 

2. Which will produce the greater returns to industry, compe- 
tition or cooperation ? 

3. Is competition consistent with the spirit of Jesus ? If so, com- 
petition for what ? 

4. How does cooperation for the common good compare in its 
effectiveness with competition for private profit as a driving motive 
in industry? 

5. Is the opportunity of serving the community a sufficient in- 
centive to develop and enlist the most efficient work and skill ? 

6. Which motive in industry is more nearly related to the spirit 
of Jesus ? Why do you think so ? 

7. How would you state the Christian motive for industry? 

8. What part of the world's work is now done on a non-competi- 
tive basis? In this respect, how would you characterize the work 
of the factory laborer, the manager, the doctor, the teacher, and the 
preacher ? 

9. If the non-competitive motive is the more Christian, why is 
it difficult to get industry to try it? Why are industrial managers 
unwilling to make the spiritual venture of managing business ac- 
cording to their faith ? 

10. What can the Church do to lead industry to adopt the Chris- 
tian motive? 

66 



THE CHRISTIAN MOTIVE FOR INDUSTRY? (ij 
CURRENT OPINIONS ON THE QUESTIONS AT ISSUE 
I. Is the Competitive Motive Consistent with a Christian Ideal? 

Lincoln a Product of Competition 

Indeed, it is chiefly through competition that we come to know the 
world, to get a various insight into people's minds, and so to achieve a 
large kind of sympathy; while those who lead a protected life generally 
lack a robust breadth of view and sense of justice. A man, like Abraham 
Lincoln, who has worked his way from bottom to top of a society every- 
where competitive, may still be, as he was, a man of notable tenderness, 
as well as of a reach of sympathy which only this experience could 
develop. 

I take it, then, that real progress in this regard consists not in abol- 
ishing the competitive spirit but in raising it to higher levels, and that the 
questions just what this means, and whether it is practicable, and how, 
are the ones we need to discuss. — Charles Horton Cooley, "Social 
Process," pp. 127, 128. 

Competition Both Good and Bad 

It is probable that competition when properly regulated has made for 
equilibrium between production and consumption ; it has aided progress by 
stimulating human energies; it has assured a measure of justice in the 
relations of wages and profits; it has benefited the poor and those in 
moderate circumstances through the lowering of prices ; it has served to 
help men find their proper places in the social order. On the other hand, 
competition has also often endangered the balance between production and 
social needs; it has failed signally to equalize the distribution of profits 
and fortunes; it no longer controls prices in such important commodities 
as steel, oil, meat, and sugar; it is excessively wasteful, as when it en- 
courages the rise of rival concerns which often combine and force the 
community to pay for useless investments; worst of all, competition, 
where it has given any measure of freedom, tends to destroy itself and 
pass over into its opposite, monopoly. — John M. Mecklin, "An Intro- 
duction to Social Ethics," pp. 392, 393. 

Produces No Christian Virtues 

Under the absorption, the exhaustion, of the fierce business compe- 
tition of America, little else than business shrewdness, business insight, 
business knowledge can grow. — S. G. Bland, "The New Christianity," 
P- 45- 



Some Theological Interpretations 

In any form of organized society there would always be 



some sort 



68 CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WORK AND WEALTH 

of rivalry, at least of an involuntary sort, unless it were based on the 
principle that all should receive exactly the same reward regardless of 
the value of their service. As long as everyone receives remuneration, 
and the remunerations are not all equal, there will necessarily be a sift- 
ing-out process to secure those who can render the best service. Even 
if profits in an industry were eliminated and all who were in any way en- 
gaged in it worked on a salary plan, and even if the highest income 
attainable were $10,000 and the lowest $5,000, there would still be 
needed some kind of emulation to determine who should hold the more 
highly paid positions. To discover and sort out the men who have the 
largest ability is necessary for the sake of the community itself, in order 
that it may have the benefit of their talents. Any successful society 
must secure the abler individuals for the difficult posts, with the result 
that the less able must fill less coveted positions. If, then, one were 
convinced of the justice of the methods employed in determining worth, 
the desire to have a better status than the lowest would be inseparable 
from the desire to be worthy of a better status than the lowest — which 
would be entirely commendable. If this be what we mean by competi- 
tion then it would not be self-seeking in any unworthy sense; it would 
simply be the effort of the individual to find his proper place and function 
in a diversified social order — an effort to reach the highest potential 
possible in the struggle of mankind for mastery over nature. — "The 
Church and Industrial Reconstruction," the Committee on the War and 
the Religious Outlook (now in press). 

Competitive Trade Inherently Selfish 

It must be remembered that all trade is and must be in a sense sel- 
fish ; trade not being infinite, nay, the trade of a particular place or dis- 
trict being possibly very limited, what one man gains another loses. In 
the hand-to-hand war of commerce . . . men fight on without much 
thought of others, except a desire to excel or to defeat them. Very 
lofty minds, like Sir Philip Sidney with his cup of water, will not stoop 
to take an advantage, if they think another wants it more. Our age, 
in spite of high authority to the contrary, is not without its Sir Philip 
Sidneys ; but these are counsels of perfection which it would be silly 
indeed to make the measure of the rough business of the world as pur- 
sued by ordinary men of business. — Lord Chief Justice Coleridge, quoted 
in "An American Labor Policy" by Julius Henry Cohen, pp. 13, 14. 

I know no limits to the right of competition in the defendants — 
I mean, no limits in law. I am not speaking of morals or good manners. 
To draw a line between fair and unfair competition, between what is 
reasonable and unreasonable, passes the power of the courts. Compe- 
tition exists when two or more persons seek to possess or enjoy the 



THE CHRISTIAN MOTIVE FOR INDUSTRY? 69 

same thing: it follows that the success of one must be the failure of 
another — and no principle of law enables us to interfere with or to 
moderate that success or that failure so long as it is due to mere compe- 
tition. — Lord Justice Fry quoted in "An American Labor Policy" by 
Julius Henry Cohen, p. 14. 

Substitutes for the Motive of Self-interest 

In a genuine commonwealth all work should be performed either from 
a desire to carry out God's work in the world or from a desire to serve 
the community, or from the joy of creation — or in many cases from all 
three motives. Indeed for a Christian there must always be some joy in 
work and some sense of serving the community in any work that is car- 
ried out in obedience to God's will. 

A great deal of the world's work is already done from one or other 
of these motives. The missionary goes out to foreign lands because he 
feels a call from God and finds that his real vocation lies in the mission 
field. This is true of many social workers and many religious workers 
at home. . . . So, too, many statesmen and many workers in the 
field of trade unionism or friendly societies or other cooperative effort 
put forward their best efforts simply and solely from a desire to serve 
the community. — John Harvey and others, "Competition — A Study in 
Human Motive," pp. 148, 149. 

A Frank Confession 

It is reported that Marvin Hughitt, when president of the Chicago 
and Northwestern Railroad, said at a meeting of railroad presidents a 
few years ago, when there was formulated that bit of railroad ethics known 
as "The Gentlemen's Agreement" : "As individuals I would trust you 
with my watch, I would accept your word without its being fortified by 
oath, I would never think of questioning your integrity. But as rail- 
road men I would not trust you with my watch, I would not accept your 
word under oath, I would not believe you as far as I could see you 
across the street." — F. Stuart Chapin, in Publications of the American 
Sociological Society, Vol. XIV, p. 106. 

II. Is the Motive of Service for the Common Good Adequate for 
the World's Workf 

Some Opinions of Scientists 

"To attribute," says Kropotkin, "the industrial progress of our cen- 
tury to the war of each against all which it has proclaimed, is to reason 
like the man who, knowing not the cause of rain, attributes it to the 
victim he has immolated before his clay idol. For industrial progress, 
as for each other conquest over nature, mutual aid and close intercourse 



70 CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WORK AND WEALTH 

certainly are, as they have been, much more advantageous than mutual 
struggle." — John M. Mecklin, "An Introduction to Social Ethics," p. 393. 

The mutual-aid tendency in man has so remote an origin, and is 
so deeply intervi'Oven with all the past evolution of the human race, that 
it has been maintained by mankind up to the present time, notwithstand- 
ing all the vicissitudes of history. It was chiefly evolved during 
periods of peace and prosperity; but when even the greatest calamities 
befell men . . . the same tendency continued to live in the villages 
and among the poorer classes in the towns; it still kept them together, 
and in the long run it reacted even upon those ruling, fighting, and 
devastating minorities which dismissed it as sentimental nonsense. 
New economical and social institutions, in so far as they were 
a creation of the masses, new ethical systems and new religions, all 
have originated from the same source. — Peter Kropotkin, "Mutual Aid," 
p. 223. 

Self-sacrifice, then, is no less primordial than self-preservation. 
. the same superiorities which have enabled the individual to 
preserve itself better have enabled it better to preserve the individuals 
derived from it; and each higher species, using its improved faculties 
primarily for egoistic benefit, has spread in proportion as it has used them 
secondarily for altruistic benefit. — Herbert Spencer, "The Data of Ethics," 
p. 240. 

A Task for Educators 

At this point the question may reasonably be asked whether it is even 
conceivable that the motive of service can ever be so strong as to get the 
work of the world done. . . . But there is reason to believe that 
similar results as regards energy and efficiency could be reached by ap- 
peals to other sides of human nature if these were made constantly from 
childhood onwards. A motive is strengthened when appeal is made to 
it, and whereas our present system thus develops the emulative instincts 
until it seems hopeless to appeal to others, a different system, which put 
less pressure on men, might give opportunity and stimulus to the develop- 
ment of other motives; some of these would be self-regarding, such as 
the Joy of Work, which is familiar to all who have freedom to perfect 
their productions, while some would be altruistic, such as the Joy of 
Service. With the former Christianity has no quarrel ; the latter is of 
its own substance. — John Harvey and others, "Competition — A Study in 
Human Motive," p. 24. 

Mr. Hoover Relies on Competition 

During the war large measures were taken on both sides of the 



THE CHRISTIAN MOTIVE FOR INDUSTRY? 71 

front to secure the mobilization of production and distribution to its 
maximum use in the struggle. . . . The partial success of these 
measures in war was due to the great patriotic impulse of war. Those 
who conducted these large operations were men whose initiative and 
capacity had been selected by the competitive system. These war im- 
pulses have been lost, and these organizations with constantly decreasing 
efficiency now face disaster from and with reduced productivity. 
Their weakness is the disregard of the normal day-to-day primary im- 
pulse of the human animal; that is, self-interest — for himself or for 
his family and home — v/ith a certain addition of altruism varying with 
his racial instinct and his degree of intelligence. They fail to take into 
account, also, that there is but one sufficiently selective agent for human 
abilities in that infinite specialization of mind and body necessary to 
maintain the output of the intricate machinery of production, and that 
is the primary school of competition. — Herbert Hoover in System, July, 
1920, p. 23. 

When Competition Gives Way to Service 

A useful merchant or professional man need not retire from busi- 
ness because he does not need to make more money. His business or 
his profession is a service which he should continue to render the com- 
munity, so long as he has health and strength, unless there be some unre- 
munerative position in which he can be more useful. But let him not 
go on amassing capital. "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon the 
earth." Let him, while he lives, invest as much as he can in distinc- 
tively Christian undertaking to serve the physical, the mental, and the 
spiritual needs of men. — Henry Sloane Coffin, "A More Christian In- 
dustrial Order," pp. 50, 51. 

III. What Can the Churches Do to Make Christian Motives Domi- 
nant in Industry f 

Conventional Christianity Considered Lacking 

It must be confessed that a careful survey of existing conventional 
religion — the religion of the average church member — in American 
society shows it often far from promoting democracy. . . . The 
vital thing, and the fact to which I refer, is the attitude of the religion 
taught by the churches toward the rights of the common man and 
toward the great question of substantial equality of rights and oppor- 
tunities in society for all men. Is the conventional religion taught by 
our churches successfully breaking down the barriers of artificial dis- 
tinction between men, and uniting individuals, classes, nations, and 
races in bonds of mutual solidarity and good will ? — Charles A. EUwood, 



72 CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WORK AND WEALTH 

"Religion and Democracy," Publications of the American Sociological 
Society, Vol. XIV, p. 129. 

A Workman's Complaint 

"There are a good many churches in this borough," he said to me 
one day, "and they are supported generally by the women. The preach- 
ers don't have any influence in securing better conditions for the men — 
they don't try to have. They never visit the mills, and they don't know 
anything about the conditions the men have to face. They think the 
men ought to go to church after working twelve hours Saturday night. 
The preachers could accomplish a lot if they would try to use their in- 
fluence in the right direction; let them quit temperance reform until they 
get better conditions for the men. It's no time to preach to a man when 
he's hungry; feed him first, then preach to him. The same thing with 
a workingman; get a decent working day with decent conditions; then 
ask him to stop drinking. Let the preachers go into the mills and see 
the men at work in the heat, and outside the mills let them notice the 
men with crushed hands or broken arms or with a leg missing. If they 
would stop their preaching long enough to look around a little they 
could do something for us if they wanted to try." — John A. Fitch, "The 
Steel Workers," p. 17. 

A Question for Christians 

For some years church people have eyed with suspicion the business 
of a distiller or a bartender. They themselves may not have been tee- 
totalers or prohibitionists; but they would not have felt comfortable 
manufacturing or selling intoxicants, nor did they wish their sons and 
daughters in this business. Should we not feel similarly towards a num- 
ber of other callings — towards types of brokerage which do not assist 
production but help gambling in stock or cotton or real estate, and 
towards the work of such middlemen as render no essential service in 
getting goods from producer to consumer? — Henry Sloane Coffin, "A 
More Christian Industrial Order," pp. 6, 7. 

A New Task for the Church 

[A proposal — ] 

That the Laymen's Committee on Inter-Church Survey urge as many 
churches as are willing to cooperate (i) to organize and support a pre- 
manent commission for investigation into, and report upon, near and re- 
mote causes and details of any economic class conflicts which may develop 
in this country; (2) that the commission be instructed to study such 
conflicts on the ground, not as attempted arbitrators, but as accredited 
representatives of associated churches, with the aim of, so far as possible, 



THE CHRISTIAN MOTIVE FOR INDUSTRY? 73 

exhausting all the material facts in the given case, especially those which 
have any appreciable bearing upon principles of justice; (3) that the as- 
sociated churches be urged to make provision for the widest circu- 
lation of the reports of this committee among the leaders of thought, 
both ministers and laymen, in their respective bodies; (4) that the com- 
mission be charged also with the duty of reporting, from time to time 
(primarily with reference to their accuracy, their fairness to all the 
interests concerned, and the competence of their authors to pass the kinds 
of judgment involved) upon books, pamphlets, and magazine articles 
which purport to represent Christian principles at issue in economic con- 
flicts; (5) that the commission be instructed to avoid duplication of work 
already in progress by organizations whose results are of such a character 
that they may be appropriated by the commission; (6) that the churches 
associated in this enterprise, and all others that approve of it, be urged 
to use their influence to secure for the publications of the commission, 
and the other publications which they recommend, all the attention which 
they may be found to deserve as materials for the construction of stand- 
ards of justice which shall apply Christian principles to the special con- 
flicts of ideas about justice which develop under our present form of 
industrial organization. — Albion W. Small in American Journal of 
Sociology, March, 1919, p. 499. 

What the Church should have as ammunition is the facts of why 
and how such a state of apparently reckless disorganization exists. It 
must go deeper than effects. It must seek out causes. The symptoms 
have been known for ages. What the church organizations need is an 
industrial pathologist, or a doctor of social medicine. This is no job for 
amateurs, nor for mere humanitarians. 

But will the Church see clearly the nature of the fight? Will 
its leaders interpret the teachings of Christ in terms of this day — setting 
aside special pleading in favor of scientific exposition? Will it search out 
the facts and study them, or will it call numberless conferences on the 
state of society and then decide, on the basis of the weightiest advocacy, 
to lend its support to this or that opinion and belief? — Mont Schuyler, 
"The World's Challenge to the Church," The Dial, September 6, 1919. 

The Hope of the Future 

Not all who speak the word will do the deed, but there is unmis- 
takably an increasing company, in which the younger men and women 
in our churches and schools are largely represented, who are entering 
with the spirit of crusaders upon the ethical conquest of modern life. 
It is upon these that both the burden and the hope of the future rest. 
No amount of science or research will take the place of a will to realize 



74 CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WORK AND WEALTH 

an ethical achievement in the world of work. If we speak at times with 
a note of certainty as to the future it is because we are confident that, 
however theories may fail and programs prove inadequate, the moral 
will of humanity may be counted on to bring in the new day. — F. Ernest 
Johnson, "The New Spirit in Industry," p. 95. 



CHAPTER X 

WHAT CHANGES ARE DEMANDED BY A CHRIS- 
TIAN VIEW OF WORK AND WEALTH? 

1. In the light of the preceding studies how do you feel about 
the three following possibilities ? 

Some say that a Christian industrial order demands a fun- 
damental reconstruction in the present capital-labor organi- 
zation of industry. Is such a radical change necessary or 
desirable? 

Some say that present inequalities grow out of evils not 
necessarily inherent in the capital-labor system; that the de- 
sired results can be secured by adjustments within the present 
industrial organization. Is such readjustment necessary, pos- 
sible, or desirable? 

Some say that there is really not anything wrong, but if 
everybody would cease agitating and go to work all would be 
well. Is this diagnosis correct ? 

2. If some radical reconstruction of society or of industry is 
to take place what is the comparative merit of the following? 

State Socialism — The ownership and operation of all the 
means of production and distribution by the state. 

Industrial Socialism — The ownership and operation of each 
industry by those engaged in it. 

Guild Socialism — The ownership of all industries by the 
state and their control and operation by those engaged in 
them. 

3. If adjustment within the present system is to be sought how 
do you value the following? 

Increased community control. 

Profit sharing. 

Participation of labor in management. 

4. If all the trouble is due to groundless agitation, how can it 
be stopped? 

5. Finally, what view should we, as Christians, take of the whole 

75 



76 CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WORK AND WEALTH 

problem of the conflict between the parties to industry — capital, 
management, labor, and the community? 

CURRENT OPINIONS ON THE QUESTIONS AT ISSUE 

I. Which Should We Do — Seek a Substitute for the Present Profit 
System of Industry, Modify It by Securing "Industrial Democ- 
racy/' or Decide that Things Had Better Be Left Alone? 

A Defense of the Present System 

Private capital uncovered and developed the resources of the United 
States. Private capital opened up to settlement and use and prosperity 
the places that had been v^^asted and idle. Private capital footed the pay- 
rolls of the laborers who built and ran the railroads. Private capital 
built and operated the factories. It was the private capital of farmers 
that bought and tended the farms and made them productive. Private 
capital is the foundation and the superstructure of all American business ; 
and wages are the biggest bills that private capital pays. — San Antonio 
Express, quoted in Industry December 15, 1919, p. 3. 

An Ethical Criticism 

The most damaging argument against profitism is the moral one, 
namely, that it fails to appeal to the highest and the best in man. There 
is no more striking evidence of this fact than the growing distrust of 
profitism that can be detected in many directions. Men distrusted profit- 
ism before the war ; when the supreme values of our civilization were 
jeopardized by that memorable struggle men suddenly awoke to the fact 
that the selfish motive of profits was a public peril. Distrust of profitism 
is evinced in the constant efforts that are being made to take from the 
sphere of profits one vital activity after another. Education, public 
health, public utilities, scientific research, the press, art, and even poli- 
tics have at one time or another provided a setting for the eternal 
struggle of a free people to keep the well-springs of its national life 
free from the clutches of the profiteer. — John M. Mecklin, "An Introduc- 
tion to Social Ethics," p. 387. 

The "Plain Man" Counted on to Preserve Private Property 

Fortunately, however, the plain man is not a fool. ... It 
would not be difficult to make him understand that if the efficiency of 
production were diminished by ten per cent, this would probably cut 
deeper into his share than do all the profits of the great capitalists and 
"captains of industry" ; and he would not find it hard to believe that 
under a communist regime productive efficiency would be impaired by 
very much more than ten per cent. . 



WHAT CHANGES ARE DEMANDED? 'jy 

He is fully capable of understanding that the chance of success and 
the danger of failure, the necessity of self-reliance, the splendid returns 
which stimulate enterprise and reward sagacity or talent — that these 
things justify the institution of property not only because they make 
for an increase in the total of our material possessions, but even more 
because the enjoyment of those possessions is infinitely greater than it 
could be under a system in which they were rationed out to us by a 
governmental machine. — "The Defense of Property," The Review, Janu- 
ary 3, 1920, pp. 3-5. 

The Wage System Condemned 

The wage system lays stress on those points in the industrial process 
where the interests of employers and workpeople run contrary to one 
another. . . . This defect cannot be overcome by strengthening 
one party to the contract at the expense of the other or by crushing trade 
unions or employers' combinations, or even by establishing the principle 
of collective bargaining. ... At its best collective bargaining 
preserves the peace by establishing a precarious balance of power, and 
whether it works well or ill for the moment it is non-normal and in- 
humane, for it has no basis in a sense of common service or public duty. 
— A. E. Zimmerman, "Progress and History." 

The A. F. of L. and Government Ownership 

The American Federation of Labor, the only organization able 
to speak for the workers, is opposed to the government owning all means 
of production and distribution and is against the state regulating all 
our industrial relations and activities. It holds that to convert private 
and individual ownership of property and free and voluntary serv- 
ice into government ownership and compulsory labor is not to create 
industrial democracy but to establish governmental bureaucracy and 
state slavery. — Matthew Woll, in Publications of the American Socio- 
logical Society, Vol. XIV, p. 54. 

A Threefold Condemnation 

There are three charges against the present economic system : 

1. It does not deliver the goods. 

2. It makes the wrong goods. 

3. The goods it does make, it makes with ruinous human and 
psychological inefficiency. — The New Age (London), Feb. 5. 

The Lesser of Two Evils 

In my opinion, in spite of the unconfessed fallacies of capitalism, 
and the unrepented sins of capitalists, you and I and all of us who 



78 CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WORK AND WEALTH 

want a just democratic reconstruction of society have less to fear at 
this moment from unregenerate capitalism than we have from hare- 
brained proletarianism. — Albion W. Small in Publications of the Ameri- 
can Sociological Society, Vol. XIV, p. 59. 

The Roots of Radicalism 

The civilized world stands in living fear of a thing it calls Bol- 
shevism, yet does not recognize the fact that it was our own civilization 
that spawned and nourished Bolshevism. The world would stamp it out, 
or at least set barriers to its spread, so there is talk of destroying it with 
force. But force will not destroy the thing even though it may suppress 
it for a time, because injustice backed by force was its father and its 
mother. It will be useless to set a guard against it at the piers 
where ships dock, for its seeds are implanted in our own industrial 
organism. No ring of armed men can stay the diffusion of its subtle 
poison where injustice makes misery, and misery makes desperation. 
No ring of armed men is needed where the sunlight of justice acts as 
a disinfectant. — A. J. Portenar in Annals of the American Academy, 
March, 1919, p. 121. 

The fault of the I. W. W. is not primarily with its members, but 
with our existing social and industrial system. There is something 
radically wrong, of which the I. W. W. is a symptom. We must try to 
get an understanding of this, not stop at mere blame of its victims. — 
Irving Fisher in Annals of the American Academy, March, 1919, p. 83. 

The Problem Simplified 

The world's want is increased production. All are consumers, a 
constantly diminishing part are producers. More goods and simpler 
habits are the only solution of high prices. Strikes, marking up values 
on paper, raising wages, pulling down the successful and substituting 
failures, socialism, democratizing industry by hoisting into its manage- 
ment by law those who have never been able to manage themselves or 
anybody else, government ownership, which is merely an applied form 
of democratizing industry, so happily demonstrated in railways, and 
kindred humbugs do nothing but exemplify the folly, avarice, and chronic 
delusions afflicting mankind as usual. — Lawrence Y. Sherman in the 
Railway Review, December 27, 1919, p. 961. 

Not Less Property, but More Owners 

A Christian's main quarrel with the existing economic order is not 
that some possess large wealth, but that so many possess practically 
nothing. A big fortune is a perilous trust, but a Christian may be trained 



WHAT CHANGES ARE DEMANDED ? 79 

to administer it conscientiously; and we have known men and women of 
large means who probably made their money do more good for the com- 
munity than a numerous group of small owners might have done with a 
similar amount. When, however, a man is without property, it is diffi- 
cult today to educate him in a Christian sense of obligation. Indeed 
the Christian appeal seems not as likely to awaken response in the pos- 
sessionless, as in those who own something. . . . Our reshaping 
of society will not be directed towards taking wealth away from its pos- 
sessors, but towards giving those v/ith nothing the chance to call some- 
thing their own. Property is an enlargement of personality and owner- 
ship is a spiritual relation which we crave for every child of God. — 
Henry Sloane Coffin, "A More Christian Industrial Order," pp. 34, 35. 

Drastic Action Called For 

The time has passed for all temporary and makeshift expedients. 
A kindly spirit in the employer, improved hygienic conditions, rest rooms, 
better pay, and shorter hours, will not secure equilibrium, though the 
spirit of good will they tend to evoke may make further struggle less 
bitter. Profit-sharing furnishes no permanent resting place. It is merely 
a camping place on the journey. — S. G. Bland, "The New Christianity," 
p. 24. 

The Plight of Capital 

If we are to avoid and withstand the wholesale socialization of 
the railway, light, heat, pov/er, and traction enterprises of the country, 
conditions m.ust be restored which will attract private capital freely, 
normally, and adequately, under proper safeguards and guarantees, again 
into this important field. Investors and the general public may well grasp 
the situation and join hands in dealing with it. The insidious campaign 
which has m.ade private capital unwilling to risk further outlays in the 
railv/ay and public utility field has had consciously for its objective 
the compelling of resort to governmental funds instead, and the clubbing 
of the present owners into willingness to sell outright on a bargain 
basis. — William L. Ransom in Proceedings of the Academy of Political 
Science, January, 1920, pp. 136, 137. 

"If present conditions continue," he said, "I fear that we will have 
plenty of labor and plenty of management, but that capital will dis- 
appear and will be forced to strike for lack of protection." 
Mr. Bache said that in "the good old days" there were 300,000 to 400,000 
investors who could be counted on to rededicate to the development of 
their country the surplus over their annual incomes, but these had dis- 
appeared. — N. Y. Times, June 30, 1920. 



8o CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WORK AND WEALTH 

A Moral Question 

Lord Hugh Cecil, in his interesting Httle book on Conservatism, 
declares that whether private property is mischievous or not, society 
cannot interfere with it, because to interfere with it is theft, and theft 
is wicked. — R. H. Tawney, "The Sickness of an Acquisitive Society," 
p. 14. 

A New Testament Example 

Now there was but one heart and soul among the multitude of the 
believers; not one of them considered anything his personal property, 
they shared all they had with one another. There was not a needy person 
among them, for those who owned land or houses would sell them and 
bring the proceeds of the sale, laying the money before the feet of the 
apostles; it was then distributed according to each individual's need. 
— Acts 4:32-35 (Translation by Moffatt). 

Opposing Views of State Control 

The proposition now being made to Congress is that the Govern- 
ment shall take the railroads from those who have conceived them, built 
them, and operated them, giving in payment government bonds. 

The control of the railroads shall then be turned over to the Govern- 
ment bureaucrats and the railroad workers, the latter a class that could have 
bought them long ago if they had saved $0.25 a day per man for this 
purpose, the former a class that has recently spent millions for each 
airplane produced, millions for each gun produced, millions for each ship 
produced. These two classes, notoriously incompetent as to administra- 
tion, are then to raise rates in order to maintain high wages and if rates, 
an indirect tax levied on all of us, do not produce the income wanted, 
then the deficiency is to be made up by appropriation, the tax levy being 
increased to make up the loss. Probably the capitalists to be bought 
out by the Government are to be taxed to the extent of sequestering 
capital in order to secure money to raise wages. — Harrington Emerson, 
"Human Parasitism or Service," Industrial Management, April, 1919, 
p. 262. 

During Federal control the Government paid a total rental to 
the railroad corporations of $1,956,831,157. Of this all but $677,513,152 
was earned over and above operating expenses. In other words, the 
Railroad Administration not only met the cost of operating the railroads 
but actually earned 3.9 per cent, assuming that the guaranteed rental 
represented 6 per cent on the going worth of the railroads. This is very 
little, in fact only one-tenth of one per cent, less than what has usually 



WHAT CHANGES ARE DEMANDED ? 8i 

been considered an adequate return on first-class government securities 
such as Liberty Bonds. — O. S. Beyer, Jr., in Socialist Review, June, 1920, 

Finds Solution in Profit-Sharing 

An industrial democracy of the most ideal sort is found in true 
profit-sharing: an industrial democracy that makes real partners of capi- 
tal and labor, and yet preserves the right of private property; that pre- 
serves and promotes the great business asset that comes from individual 
initiative; that retains the capitalist's incentive to enterprise, while 
giving the worker a new inspiration for effort that humanizes large 
organizations of men ; that promotes good will and industrial peace. — 
George W. Perkins, "Profit-Sharing, or the Workers' Fair Share." 

What Labor Wants 

We are misleading ourselves if we think for a moment we can pur- 
chase loyalty by introducing welfare work. . . . Only recently 
several hundred employes of a large plant in New Jersey suspended 
work when the company refused to grant an increase in wages. The offi- 
cials of the company pointed to their pension fund, sick benefit associa- 
tion, and many other attractions, but the workers merely said these were 
abstract things, what they wanted was more money, not welfare work. 

A government investigator on welfare work recently said: "Union 
labor has steadfastly opposed employers' welfare work, holding that its 
aim and tendency is to shackle labor with gratitude and diminish its 
freedom in the bargaining process." — Charles E. Fouhy, "Welfare Work 
and Industrial Stability," Industrial Management, November, 1919, p. 413. 

What is a bonus? If deferred wages, why deferred? If a tip do 
you want it? — The Retail Clerks International Advocate, March, 1920, 
p. 9. 

. . . Outside of organized labor a great deal of the working sympathy 
[with profit-sharing] is secvtred because the employes are convinced 
that the employer's interests are in some real sense at one with labor 
interests. So far as they believe this they are for the time, at least, 
content with this modest partnership. But with the unions and their 
unorganized sympathizers the doubt of employers' motives and methods 
is a lion in the way. — John Graham, "Labor's Challenge to the Social 
Order," p. 349. 

How to Avoid Revolution 

In international relations the choice is between two alternatives — 
competition and drift, or cooperation and control. In industrial relations 
the leadership is confined to a choice between the same alternatives. 



82 CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WORK AND WEALTH 

Political statesmanship must choose between international association 
and international anarchy. Industrial statesmanship must choose be- 
tween a fundamental reorganization of industrial relations upon a more 
democratic basis on the one hand, and an intensified class struggle on 
the other, with revolution as a probability to be reckoned with. The 
former means for society economy and conservative progress. The 
latter means costly, radical excess. — Glenn Frank, "The Politics of In- 
dustry," p. 100. 

Whether and to what extent the inevitable social revolution that is 
upon us can be made to take place peaceably, and by due process of law, 
without disastrous dislocation and temporary social chaos, will depend, 
principally, upon the spirit and temper and tone by which it is inspired 
and managed. — "The Employer of Tomorrow," The New Statesman, 
Oct. i8, 1919, pp. 53, 54. 

"All Is Well" 

There is no conflict between capital and labor. Each is dependent 
upon the other. Both recognize this fact. The almost innumerable 
troubles which have resulted in strikes and often riots and bloodshed 
during the last year or longer have been between employers and labor 
union leaders, who have not represented or been requested to repre- 
sent the great majority of workmen. 

While I recognize, and for many months have comprehended, dangers 
in the general situation, I am more optimistic in regard to the future 
of this country than I have been at any time before during the last six 
years. If people generally will recognize the possible dangers which have 
been hinted at and will, each for himself or herself, do everything pos- 
sible and practicable to im.prove conditions, we shall soon return to a 
basis of living which should be entirely satisfactory. — Judge Elbert H. 
Gary, The Evening Post, July 23, 1920. 

II. // You Believe that tlie Existing System Should Be Modified 
or Reconstructed, What Would You Recotnmendf 

What Socialism Is 

Stated in more concrete terms, the Socialist program requires the 
public or collective ownership and operation of the principal instruments 
and agencies for the production and distribution of wealth — the land, 
mines, railroads, steamboats, telegraph and telephone lines, mills, fac- 
tories, and modern machinery. 

This is the main program and the ultimate aim of the whole Social- 
ist movement and the political creed of all Socialists. It is the unfail- 



WHAT CHANGES ARE DEMANDED? 83 

ing test of Socialist adherence, and admits of no limitation, extension, or 
variation. Whoever accepts this program is a Socialist, whoever does 
not, is not. — Morris Hillquit, "Socialism Summed Up," p. 25. 

Here enters Socialism. It proposes to abolish the division of indus- 
trial society into two classes and to close the fatal chasm which has sepa- 
rated the employing class from the working class since the introduction 
of power machinery. It proposes to restore the independence of the 
workingman by making him once more the owner of his tools and to give 
him the full proceeds of his production instead of a wage determined 
by his poverty. It has no idea of reverting to the simple methods of 
the old handicrafts, but heartily accepts the power machinery, the great 
factory, the division of labor, the organization of the men in great regi- 
ments of workers as established facts in modern life, and as the most 
efficient method of producing wealth. But it proposes to give to the whole 
body of workers the ownership of these vast instruments of production 
and to distribute among them all the entire proceeds of their common 
labor. There would then be no capitalistic class opposed to the work- 
ing class; there would be a single class which would unite the qualities 
of both. Every workman would be both owner and worker, just as a 
farmer is who tills his own farm, or a housewife who works in her own 
kitchen. — Walter Rauschenbusch, "Christianity and the Social Crisis," 
pp. 407, 408. 

State Socialism Feared by Industrial Socialists 

Government ownership can never lead to Socialism. It is not a step 
toward Socialism. It has nothing socialistic about it, because all polit- 
ical government is administration from the top. At the present time the 
employes of the United States Post Office are treated worse than many 
employes of private capitalists. The railway mail clerks are less protected 
and work for less wages than most of the other trainmen. Wherever the 
capitalists are being driven by the Socialist Movement they are crying 
out for "government ownership" to save them. The railroad thieves in 
the United States will soon want for nothing so much as to turn over 
their watered stocks to the National Government. They would then 
draw their profits as interest on government bonds. No profits in tlie 
world could be safer. The Governm.ent would then have to rob the rail- 
road workers and turn over the stolen money to the idle government 
railroad bondholders. — William D, Haywood and Frank Bohn, "Indus- 
trial Socialism," pp. 50, 51. 

Demand that the State Be Discarded 

Under Socialism the government of the nation will be an industrial 
government, a shop government. The political government of today, 



84 CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WORK AND WEALTH 

composed of president, congress and the courts, with the governments of 
the various states, is purely a class government. It is the government 
of the property holding classes. Its purpose is to protect private prop- 
erty and keep the w^orkers, who have no property, in subjection. Its 
most important laws are laws of oppression. Its most important build- 
ings are courthouses and prisons. Its most important servants are 
policemen, detectives, and soldiers. — William D. Haywood and Frank 
Bohn, "Industrial Socialism," p. 49. 

The Marxian Industrial Unionists contend that the State is, by 
origin and function alike, the protector of property and the inveterate 
and unrelenting enemy of the dispossessed classes. They hold, not 
merely that the State of today expresses the ideas and desires of the 
dominant economic class, but that "the State" only came into existence 
at all with the rise of that class and for its protection, and that, with 
the passing of that class, the State itself will pass away. The Common- 
wealth of the future, they hold, will have its administrative machinery, 
but this machinery will be not "a democratized State," but an economic 
organization representing the working class, and based upon the indus- 
trial grouping of the working class. — G. D. H. Cole, "Labor in the Com- 
monwealth," p. 179. 

V/hat Has Happened in Russia t 

It is always easier to understand an actual thing than a theory, and 
the history of Russia during the period since the first Revolution of 
19 1 7, enables us to see in action the theories of the Marxian Industrial 
Unionists. The first Revolution resulted in a partly democratized, or at 
least in a constitutional. State. The theory behind the calling of the 
Constituent Assembly was that it would result in a completely democra- 
tized State. The Bolsheviks, however, regarded the Constituent Assem- 
bly as a sham, because they did not believe in a democratized "State" 
as the basis of the new Russian Commonwealth. Their watchword was 
"All power for the Soviets," or, in other words, the substitution for the 
State of a social organization based upon the economic grouping of the 
working class. The theory behind the Bolshevik regime in Russia, at 
least in the minds of those who desire permanence, is essentially the 
same as the theory of Marxian Industrial Unionism all the world over. 
It is based upon the economic interpretation of history, and upon the 
view that, as the State is the political expression of the Capitalist Sys- 
tem, so the Soviet regime is the expression of Socialism. — G. D. H. Cole, 
"Labor in the Commonwealth," pp. 179, 180. 

There is no doubt that the present government, officially known as 
the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic, has established a form 



WHAT CHANGES ARE DEMANDED ? 85 

of government which is quite out of harmony with prevailing ideals of 
political democracy. Instead of delegates representing territories without 
class cleavages, the Russian Soviets, graduated all the way from the local 
to the national body, are composed of representatives chosen by the various 
industrial establishments and peasant communities. Lenin once said that 
the difference between Russia and America in this respect is that in 
America industry is clandestinely represented in politics, but that in 
Russia it is represented openly and by design. — F. Ernest Johnson, "The 
New Spirit in Industry," p. 76. 

The Creed of the I. W. W. 

The Industrial Workers of the World (I. W. W.) represent syn- 
dicalism in its pure form in the United States. They were "bolshevists" 
before the Bolsheviki appeared. The I. W. W. adhere to industrial labor 
organization as against craft organization, because they aim at class 
consciousness and class movement. Working class unity is not fur- 
thered, they believe, by organization on a craft basis, in which groups 
that should be allied are severed by jurisdictional disputes. They also 
hold that political action is a hindrance rather than an aid to their in- 
dustrial ends. The strike is their chief weapon and the general strike 
is their ultimate aim. They object not only to the political method, 
but to the ideals of a political state. — F. Ernest Johnson, "The New 
Spirit in Industry," pp. 80, 81. 

Socialist Philosophy 

The Marxian philosophy of history underlies all strictly working 
class programs. It is known as economic determinism, and is susceptible 
of both moderate and extreme statement. It has modified the thinking 
of many economists, who nevertheless repudiate it as an exclusive prin- 
ciple for interpreting events. Obviously, in bold statement, the doctrine 
is materialistic and explains ideals as mere reflexes. It has ardent 
devotees, who do not hesitate to explain the most sentimental romance by 
reference to some "economic determinant." Party socialism has suf- 
fered much at this point from the over-statement of a very important 
principle. The events of the last five years have rudely shaken socialism 
out of its dogmatic slumbers. — F. Ernest Johnson, "The New Spirit in 
Industry," p. 79. 

Guild Socialism 

A more typically English development has been a movement which 
is beginning to be known as Guild Socialism, and which combines State 
Socialism with a more democratic method of organizing state industries. 
The State is to be the ultimate owner of all the means and instruments 



86 CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WORK AND WEALTH 

of production, but each group of producers is to be responsible for the 
actual working of its own industry. The State has to be supreme owner, 
otherwise one powerful group, such as the miners, might be able to ex- 
ploit its monopoly position. But within these limits each group of pro- 
ducers is to form a cooperative society, managing its own business on 
a thoroughly democratic basis. The greatest possible amount of initia- 
tive is to be given to each group of workers, and in the framing of deci- 
sions each group is to make its own contribution, thus enabling each 
man to feel that upon himself as a member of his group rests the success 
or failure of the business. — John Harvey and others, "Competition — A 
Study in Human Motive," pp. 144, 145. 

The National Guildsman believes that industry ought to be controlled 
by the workers engaged in it; but he believes also that the State ought 
to own industry, and that popular control must be established over the 
machinery of the State. ... I can only say that Guildsmen believe that 
it is impossible to have a really democratic political system while the 
economic system remains undemocratic, and continues to be based on the 
denial of the Humanity of Labor. And, on the other hand, the democra- 
tization of the industrial system will make possible a parallel democrati- 
zation of the political machine. The way to political and individual as 
well as to industrial freedom lies in the control of industry, and it is for 
this reason that the industrial problem occupies its paramount position 
among social questions. The Guild system, I believe, furnishes the best 
possible solution of the social problem, because it carries with it the best 
reconciliation for our time of the principles of freedom and order — 
principles apparently in conflict, which must be reconciled in any sys- 
tem which is to satisfy our moral striving after personal freedom and 
cooperation one with another. — G. D. H. Cole in The Living Age, July 
26, 1919, p. 217. 

The Christian Hope for Industry 

Is it too much to believe that, having witnessed Humanity pass 
through its Gethsemane, having seen its agony in the Garden of Fears, 
having beheld its crucifixion upon the cross of Militarism, Labor and 
Capital will yet bring to a disconsolate and brokenhearted world the 
one hope it is theirs alone to bring; and that, in the acceptance of prin- 
ciples which hold deliverance from the scourges that beset Mankind, 
they will roll back the stone from the door of the world's sepulchre today, 
and give to Humanity the promise of its resurrection to a more abun- 
dant life?— W. L. Mackenzie King, "Industry and Humanity,' pp, 
528, 529- 



SUGGESTED DEVOTIONAL MATERIAL 

I 

Scripture 

Behold, my servant, whom I uphold; my chosen, in whom my soul 
delighteth: I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice 
to the Gentiles. He will not cry, nor lift up his voice, nor cause it to 
be heard in the street. A bruised reed will he not break, and a dimly 
burning wick will he not quench: he will bring forth justice in truth. 
He will not fail nor be discouraged, till he have set justice in the earth; 
and the isles shall wait for his law. — Isa. 42: 1-4. 

Prayer 

O God, our Father, Thou art speaking to us in so many ways, and 
we are so dull we do not even hear Thee. Out of the depths do men cry 
unto Thee for help and how canst Thou help them, save as thy children 
hear their cry and answer it? 

Thou art calling to us out of the needs of Thy people everywhere. 
Teach us to listen for Thy voice speaking to us in our hearts. And when 
Thou dost ask us to help Thee, O may we not refuse. 

We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.^ 

II 

Scripture 

Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that 
hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk 
without money and without price. Wherefore do ye spend money for that 
which is not bread ? and your labor for that which satisfieth not ? hearken 
diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul de- 
light itself in fatness. . 

Seek ye Jehovah while he may be found; call ye upon him while 
he is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man 
his thoughts; and let him return unto Jehovah, and he will have mercy 
upon him ; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. — Isa. 55 : 1-7. 

Prayer 

Our Heavenly Father, without whose help labor is useless, without 
whose light search is vain, invigorate our studies and direct our in- 
quiries, that by due diligence and right discernment, we may establish 



iFrom Hartshome's "Manual of Training in Worship." Copyright, 191 S, by Charles Scrib- 
ner's Sons. Used by permission. 

87 



88 CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WORK AND WEALTH 

ourselves and others in thy holy faith. Let us not linger in ignorance, 
but enlighten and support us. 

Open wide the window of our spirits, and fill us full of light; open 
wide the door of our hearts, that we may receive and entertain Thee 
with all our powers of adoration and love. Amen. 



Ill 



Scripture 



I will lift up mine eyes unto the mountains: 

From whence shall my help come? 

My help cometh from Jehovah, 

Who made heaven and earth. 

He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: 

He that keepeth thee will not slumber. 

Behold, he that keepeth Israel 

Will neither slumber nor sleep. 

Jehovah is thy keeper: 

Jehovah is thy shade upon thy right hand. — Psalm 121 : 1-5. 

Prayer 

Father, we bring to Thee our hopes, asking that Thou wilt purify 
them. Cleanse us from all unworthy desires. Inspire us by the vision 
of things worth doing and worth being. 

Each day brings to us its work and play, its opportunities to be 
generous or mean, kind or thoughtless, rude or courteous, selfish or 
helpful. Help us to put away from us the unmanly and cowardly things 
and to brace ourselves to make for what is good and just and pure, know- 
ing that with Thy help we shall succeed. 

We ask it for Thy Kingdom's sake. Amen.' 

IV 

Scripture 

Give the king thy judgments, O God, 

And thy righteousness unto the king's son. 

He will judge thy people with righteousness, 

And thy poor with justice. 

The mountains shall bring peace to the people, 

And the hills, in righteousness. 

He will judge the poor of the people. 

He will save the children of the needy. 

And will break in pieces the oppressor. 

They shall fear thee while the sun endureth, 

'From Hartshorne's "Manual for Training in Worship." Copyright, 1915, by Charles Scrib- 
ner's Sons. Used by permission. 



SUGGESTED DEVOTIONAL MATERIAL 89 

And so long as the moon, throughout all generations. 

He will come down like rain upon the mown grass. 

And showers that water the earth. 

In his days shall the righteous flourish, 

And abundance of peace, till the moon be no more. 

He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, 

And from the River unto the ends of the earth. . 

Yea, all kings shall fall down before him ; 

All nations shall serve him. 

For he will deliver the needy when he crieth, 

And the poor, that hath no helper. 

He will have pity on the poor and needy, 

And the souls of the needy he will save. 

He will redeem their soul from oppression and violence; 

And precious will be their blood in his sight. — Psalm "jz : 1-14. 

Prayer 

O God of purity and peace, God of light and freedom, God of com- 
fort and joy; we thank Thee for our country, this great land of hope, 
whose wide doors Thou hast opened to so many that struggle with hard- 
ship and with hunger in the crowded Old World. 

We give thanks to the power that has made and preserved us a nation, 
and has given us a place of honor and power that we might bear aloft the 
standard of universal liberty and impartial law. 

May our altars and our schools ever stand as foundations of welfare ; 
may the broad land be filled with homes of intelligent and contented 
industry, that through the long generations our land may be a happy 
land and our country a power of good will among the nations. Amen. 

V 

Scripture 

Jehovah, who shall sojourn in thy tabernacle? 

Who shall dwell in thy holy hill? 

He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, 

And speaketh truth in his heart; 

He that slandereth not with his tongue, 

Nor doeth evil to his friend. 

Nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbor; 

In whose eyes a reprobate is despised, 

But who honoreth them that fear Jehovah; 

He that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not; 

He that putteth not out his money to interest. 

Nor taketh reward against the innocent. 

He that doeth these things shall never be moved. — Psalm 15. 



go CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WORK AND WEALTH 

Prayer 

O God, our Father, even today it is often hard for people to hold 
fast to Thee. Many of our friends, who are trying to do right and to 
deal fairly with other people, find it har?l to be honorable and just in 
every little thing when others are winning fame and wealth by deeds of 
dishonor and oppression and injustice. Only Thou knowest the terrible 
temptations which come to those who possess power over men, power 
in money, in politics, in business. We pray, our Father, that Thou wilt 
strengthen these men. Help them to keep before their eyes the vision 
of an honorable success, and may no alluring lust or selfish ambition, 
nor any fear of failure, crowd out the high resolves which they have 
made. 

And Thou hast given power also even to the youngest and smallest 
of us. We all can be of help in some way, and we all are learning to be 
more useful every day. Often we are tempted to please ourselves instead 
of doing some little irksome duty which will be of help to someone else. 
Keep us faithful, O Father. May the peevish and thoughtless words be 
checked. May our whole desire be to make all around us happy. 

And so, as each does his part, shall justice roll down like waters 
and righteousness as a mighty stream. Amen.' 

VI 

Scripture 

Blessed are those who feel poor in spirit! 

the Realm of heaven is theirs. 
Blessed are the mourners ! 

they will be consoled. 
Blessed are the humble ! 

they will inherit the earth. 
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for goodness! 

they will be satisfied. 
Blessed are the merciful ! 

they will find mercy. 
Blessed are the pure in heart ! 

they will see God, 
Blessed are the peacemakers ! 

they will be ranked sons of God. 
Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of 
goodness ! 

the Realm of heaven is theirs. 

Blessed are you when men denounce you and persecute you and utter 



•From Hartshorne's "Manual for Training in Worship." Copyright. 191S. by Charles Scrib- 
ner's Sons. Used by permission. 



SUGGESTED DEVOTIONAL MATERIAL 91 

all manner of evil against you for my sake; rejoice and exult in it, for 
your reward is rich in heaven; that is how they persecuted the prophets 
before you. 

You are the salt of the earth. But if salt becomes insipid, what can 
make it salt again? After that it is fit for nothing, fit only to be thrown 
outside and trodden by the feet of men. 

You are the light of the world. A town on the top of a hill cannot 
be hidden. Nor do men light a lamp to put it under a bowl; they put it 
on a stand and it shines for all in the house. So your light is to shine 
before men, that they may see the good you do and glorify your Father 
in heaven. — Matt. 5:3-16 (Translation by Moffatt). 

Prayer 

Our Father, we thank Thee that Thou art very close to us. We 
thank Thee that Thou art our Friend. Our thoughts have found fellow- 
ship with Thee in the city where Thou dwellest, and we have learned that 
the city where Thou dwellest is our home. 

Grant, O Father, Thou whose almighty love ruleth evermore, grant 
that all our selfish deeds may cease. May sorrow and sin and suffering 
flee away, and Thy Kingdom of Peace and Good Will be established in 
the earth. Amen.* 

VII 

Scripture 

And if I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my 
body to be burned, but have not love, it profiteth me nothing. Love 
suffereth long and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is 
not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its own, is 
not provoked, taketh not account of evil; rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, 
but rejoiceth with the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, 
hopeth all things, endureth all things. . . . But now abideth 
faith, hope, love, these three ; and the greatest of these is love. — I. Cor. 
13:3-7, 13- 

Prayer 

Our Father, we thank thee for all the friendly folk who have come 
into our life this day, gladdening us by their human kindness, and we send 
them now our parting thoughts of love through Thee. We bless Thee 
that we are set amidst this rich brotherhood of kindred life with its mys- 
terious power to quicken and uplift. Make us eager to pay the due 
price for what we get by putting forth our own life in wholesome good 
will and by bearing cheerily the troubles that go with all joys. Above 

*From Hartshorae's "Manual for Training in Worship." Copyright, 191S, by Charles Scrib- 
ner's Sons. Used by pennission. 



92 CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WORK AND WEALTH 

all we thank Thee for those who share our higher life, the comrades of 
our better self, in whose companionship we break the mystic bread of life 
and feel the glow of Thy wonderful presence. Into Thy keeping we com- 
mit our friends, and pray that we may never lose their love by losing 
Thee. Amen." 

VIII 

Scripture 

Let your love be a real thing, with a loathing for evil and a bent for 
what is good. Put affection into your love for the brotherhood; be for- 
ward to honor one another; never let your zeal flag; maintain the 
spiritual glow; serve the Lord; let your hope be a joy to you; be sted- 
fast in trouble, attend to prayer, contribute to needy saints, make a 
practice of hospitality. Bless those who make a practice of persecut- 
ing you; bless them instead of cursing them. Rejoice with those who 
rejoice, and weep with those who weep. Keep in harmony with one 
another; instead of being ambitious, associate with humble folk; never 
be self-conceited. Never pay back evil for evil to anyone; aim to be 
above reproach in the eyes of all; be at peace with all men, if possible, 
so far as that depends on you. Never revenge yourselves, beloved, but 
let the Wrath of God have its way ; for it is written. Vengeance is mine, 
I will exact a requital — the Lord has said it. No, 

if your enemy is hungry, feed him, 
if he is thirsty, give him drink; 

for in this way you will make him 
feel a burning sense of shame. 
Do not let evil get the better of you; get the better of evil by doing 
good. — Rom. 12:9-21 (Translation by Moffatt). 

Prayer 

O God, Thou mightiest worker of the universe, source of all strength 
and author of all unity, we pray Thee for our brothers, the industrial 
workers of the nation. As their work binds them together in common 
toil and danger, may their hearts be knit together in a strong sense of 
their common interests and destiny. Help them to realize that the in- 
jury of one is the concern of all, and that the welfare of all must be 
the aim of every one. If any of them is tempted to sell the birthright 
of his class for a mess of pottage for himself, give him a wider out- 
look and a nobler sympathy with his fellows. Teach them to keep step 
in a steady onward march, in their own way to fulfil the law of Christ 
by bearing the common burdens. 

And may the upward climb of labor, its defeats and its victories, 

'Walter Rauschenbusch, "For God and the People: Prayers of the Social Awakening." 



.. SUGGESTED DEVOTIONAL MATERIAL 93 

in the farther reaches bless all classes of our nation, and build up for 
the republic of the future a great body of workers, strong of limb, clear 
of mind, fair in temper, eager to labor, conscious of their worth, and 
striving together for the final brotherhood of all men. Amen." 

IX 

Scripture 

Ye have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for 
a tooth: but I say unto you. Resist not him that is evil: but whosoever 
smiteth thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any 
man would go to law with thee, and take away thy coat, let him have thy 
cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go one mile, go 
with him two. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would 
borrow of thee turn not thou away. 

Ye have heard that it was said. Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and 
hate thine enemy: but I say unto you. Love your enemies, and pray 
for them that persecute you ; that ye may be sons of your Father who is 
in heaven : for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and 
sendeth rain on the just and the unjust. For if ye love them that love you, 
what reward have ye ? do not even the publicans the same ? And if ye 
salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others ? do not even the 
Gentiles the same? Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly 
Father is perfect. — Matt. 5:38-48. 

Prayer 

Father in Heaven, forgive us that we are so ready to quarrel. For- 
give us for the unfriendly words that have escaped our lips and burned 
into the hearts of our friends. Our angry and spiteful thoughts go jar- 
ring and jangling through the courts of heaven, and we are ashamed. 

Make us lovers of peace and concord. So fill our hearts with kind- 
ness and good will that there will be no room in our lives for envy or 
scorn or hate. 

Bring peace speedily, O God, to our suffering world. May men 
everywhere come to the knowledge of Thy love, that they may over- 
come hatred and prejudice, and make real on earth Thy Kingdom of 
Righteousness and Peace. 

All this we ask in the name of Jesus our Master. Amen.'' 

X 

Scripture 

And I saw a new heaven and a new earth : for the first heaven and 

8 Walter Rauschenbusch, "For God and the People: Prayers of the Social Awakening." 
'From Hartshome's "Manual for Training In Worship." Copyright, 1915, by Charles Scrii> 
ner's Sons, Used by permission. 



94 CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WORK AND WEALTH 

the first earth are passed away; and the sea is no more. And I saw the 
holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made 
ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice 
out of the throne saying. Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and 
he shall dwell with them, and they shall be his peoples, and God himself 
shall be with them, and be their God : and he shall wipe away every 
tear from their eyes; and death shall be no more; neither shall there 
be mourning, nor crying, nor pain, any more : the first things are passed 
away. And he that sitteth on the throne said, Behold, I make all things 
new. — Rev. 21 : 1-5. 

Prayer 

O Thou who art the confidence of all the ends of the earth, we thank 
Thee for the power of faith by which Thou art transforming the world. 
Forgive us our mistrust. Forgive us if we have prevented any one 
from being all he should be because we failed to trust him enough. Thou 
dost trust us in spite of all our failures ; and we know that we couldn't 
be half what we are if it weren't that our fathers and mothers and 
friends believe in us and expect us to do our best. 

Help us to have faith in every one of Thy children, just as we want 
them to have faith in us. And so, by the power of the faith which Jesus 
had in his disciples, by the power of the faith which thou dost have in 
Thy wayward children, by the power of the faith which we have in one 
another, may the days of peace and good will be established in the earth. 

We ask it in the name of him who trusted even those who slew 
him. Amen.' 



'From Hartshome's "Manual for Training in Worship." Copyright, 191S. by Charles Scrib- 
ner's Sons, Used by permission. 






